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Client side sessions should not allow unencrypted storage

Moderate
ldaley published GHSA-phj8-4cq3-794g Jun 29, 2021

Package

maven io.ratpack:ratpack-session (Maven)

Affected versions

< 1.9.0

Patched versions

1.9.0

Description

Impact

The default configuration of client side sessions results in unencrypted, but signed, data being set as cookie values. This means that if something sensitive goes into the session, it could be read by something with access to the cookies.

Note: the documentation does point this out and encourage users to add an encryption key, but it is not mandatory.

For this to be a vulnerability, some kind of sensitive data would need to be stored in the session and the session cookie would have to leak. For example, the cookies are not configured with httpOnly and an adjacent XSS vulnerability within the site allowed capture of the cookies.

The proposed change is to change the default behaviour to use a randomly generated encryption key. This would mean that sessions do not survive app restarts, but this is already the behaviour given the random signing key.

Patches

As of version 1.9.0, a securely randomly generated signing key is used.

Workarounds

Supply an encryption key, as per the documentation recommendation.

References

Severity

Moderate
6.5
/ 10

CVSS base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
Required
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

CVE ID

CVE-2021-29481

Weaknesses

Credits