fix(deps): update dependency apollo-server to v2.25.4 [security] #308

renovate · 2022-03-07T13:39:10Z

This PR contains the following updates:

Package	Change	Age	Adoption	Passing	Confidence
apollo-server	`2.19.1` -> `2.25.4`

GitHub Vulnerability Alerts

GHSA-qm7x-rc44-rrqw

Impact

In certain configurations, Apollo Server serves the client-side web app "GraphQL Playground" from the same web server that executes GraphQL operations. This web app has access to cookies and other credentials associated with the web server's operations. There is a cross-site scripting vulnerability in GraphQL Playground that allows for arbitrary JavaScript code execution in your web server's origin. If a user clicks a specially crafted link to your GraphQL Playground page served by Apollo Server, an attacker can steal cookies and other private browser data.

Details of the underlying GraphQL Playground vulnerability are available in this graphql-playground advisory. (A similar vulnerability exists in the related graphiql project.) This advisory focuses on identifying whether Apollo Server installations are vulnerable and mitigating the vulnerability in Apollo Server; see the other advisories for details on the XSS vulnerability itself.

The impact of this vulnerability is more severe if (as is common) your GraphQL server's origin URL is an origin that is used to store sensitive data such as cookies.

In order for this vulnerability to affect your Apollo Server installation, it must actually serve GraphQL Playground. The integration between Apollo Server and GraphQL Playground is different in Apollo Server 2 and Apollo Server 3. You can tell which version of Apollo Server you are running by looking at the version of the package from which you import the ApolloServer class: this may be apollo-server, apollo-server-express, apollo-server-lambda, etc.

Apollo Server 3

Apollo Server 3 does not serve GraphQL Playground by default. It has a landing page plugin system and the default plugin is a simple splash page that is not vulnerable to this exploit, linking to Apollo Sandbox Explorer. (We chose to change the default because GraphQL Playground is not actively maintained.)

If you are running Apollo Server 3, then you are only vulnerable if you explicitly import the ApolloServerPluginLandingPageGraphQLPlayground plugin and pass it to your ApolloServer's constructor in the plugins array. Otherwise, this advisory does not apply to your server.

Apollo Server 2

Apollo Server 2 serves GraphQL Playground by default, unless the NODE_ENV environment variable is set to production, or if you explicitly configure it via the playground option to the ApolloServer constructor.

Your Apollo Server 2 installation is vulnerable if any of the following is true:

You pass playground: true to the ApolloServer constructor
You pass some other object like playground: {title: "Title"} to the ApolloServer constructor
You do not pass any playground option to the ApolloServer constructor, and the NODE_ENV environment variable is not set to production

Apollo Server 1

Apollo Server 1 included graphiql instead of graphql-playground. graphiql isn't automatically enabled in Apollo Server 1: you have to explicitly call a function such as graphiqlExpress to enable it. Because Apollo Server 1 is not commonly used, we have not done a detailed examination of whether the integration between Apollo Server 1 and graphiql is vulnerable to a similar exploit. If you are still using Apollo Server 1, we recommend you disable graphiql by removing the graphiqlExpress call, and then upgrade to a newer version of Apollo Server.

Patches and workarounds

There are several approaches you can take to ensure that your server is not vulnerable to this issue.

Upgrade Apollo Server

The vulnerability has been patched in Apollo Server 2.25.3 and Apollo Server 3.4.1. To get the patch, upgrade your Apollo Server entry point package to one of the fixed versions; this package may be apollo-server, apollo-server-express, apollo-server-lambda, etc. Additionally, if you depend directly on apollo-server-core in your package.json, make sure that you upgrade it to the same version.

Upgrade Playground version only

If upgrading to the latest version of Apollo Server 2 or 3 quickly will be challenging, you can configure your current version of Apollo Server to serve the latest version of the GraphQL Playground app. This will pin your app to serve a specific version of GraphQL Playground and you will not receive updates to it when you upgrade Apollo Server later, but this may be acceptable because GraphQL Playground is not actively maintained.

The way to do this depends on what version of Apollo Server you're using and if you're already configuring GraphQL Playground.

Apollo Server 3: If you are using Apollo Server 3, then you are only vulnerable if your serve explicitly calls ApolloServerPluginLandingPageGraphQLPlayground and passes it to the Apollo Server constructor in the plugins array. Add the option version: '1.7.42' to this call, so it looks like:

plugins: [ApolloServerPluginLandingPageGraphQLPlayground({version: '1.7.42'})]

Apollo Server 2 with no explicit playground option: If you are using Apollo Server 2 and do not currently pass the playground option to new ApolloServer, add a playground option like so:

new ApolloServer({ playground: process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production' ? false : { version: '1.7.42' } })

Apollo Server 2 with playground: true or playground: {x, y, z}: If you are using Apollo Server 2 and currently pass true or an object to new ApolloServer, pass the version option under the playground option like so:

new ApolloServer({ playground: { version: '1.7.42', x, y, z } })

Disable GraphQL Playground

If upgrading Apollo Server or GraphQL Playground is challenging, you can also disable GraphQL Playground.

In Apollo Server 3, remove the call to ApolloServerPluginLandingPageGraphQLPlayground from your ApolloServer constructor's plugins array. This will replace GraphQL Playground with a simple splash page. See the landing page plugins docs for details.

In Apollo Server 2, add playground: false to your ApolloServer constructor: new ApolloServer({ playground: false }). This will replace GraphQL Playground with an attempt to execute a GraphQL operation, which will likely display an error in the browser.

If you disable GraphQL Playground, any users who rely on it to execute GraphQL operations will need an alternative, such as the Apollo Studio Explorer's account-free Sandbox.

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by @Ry0taK. Thank you!

The fix to GraphQL Playground was developed by @acao and @glasser with help from @imolorhe, @divyenduz, and @benjie.

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

Read the graphql-playground advisory
Open an issue in the apollo-server repo
If the issue involves confidential information, email us at [email protected]

GHSA-2p3c-p3qw-69r4

Impact

The graphql-upload npm package can execute GraphQL operations contained in content-type: multipart/form-data POST requests. Because they are POST requests, they can contain GraphQL mutations. Because they use content-type: multipart/form-data, they can be "simple requests" which are not preflighted by browsers.

If your GraphQL server uses graphql-upload and uses SameSite=None cookies for authentication, then JS on any origin can cause browsers to send cookie-authenticated mutations to your GraphQL server, which will be executed without checking your CORS policy first. (The attack won't be able to see the response to the mutation if your CORS policy is set up properly, but the side effects of the mutation will still happen.)

Additionally, if your GraphQL server uses graphql-upload relies on network properties for security (whether by explicitly looking at the client's IP address or by only being available on a private network), then JS on any origin can cause browsers (which may be on a private network or have an allowed IP address) to send mutations to your GraphQL server, which will be executed without checking your CORS policy first. (This attack does not require your server to use cookies. It is in some cases prevented by some browsers such as Chrome.)

Apollo Server 2 bundled graphql-upload and enabled it by default, so by default, Apollo Server 2 servers are vulnerable to these CSRF attacks. (Apollo Server 1 did not bundle graphql-upload. Apollo Server 3 no longer bundles graphql-upload, although AS3's docs do document how to manually integrate with graphql-upload.) It is enabled even if your server makes no use of the upload functionality.

If you are running Apollo Server 2 (older than v2.25.4) and do not specify uploads: false to new ApolloServer, then you are vulnerable to this CSRF mutation attack.

We recently introduced an opt-in CSRF prevention feature in Apollo Server 3.7. This feature successfully protects against CSRF even if you have manually integrated your AS3.7 server with graphql-upload. However, this feature is not available for Apollo Server 2.

Patches

If you are using Apollo Server 2 and do not actually use uploads in your schema (ie, the Upload scalar is not used as the argument to any field or in any input object definition, and you do not specify uploads to new ApolloServer), then upgrading to Apollo Server 2.25.4 will automatically disable graphql-upload in your server. This will fix the CSRF mutation vulnerability.

Upgrading to v2.25.4 does still leave your server vulnerable to non-mutation CSRF attacks such as timing attacks against query operations. To protect yourself against these potentially lower impact CSRF attack, we encourage upgrading to Apollo Server v3.7 and enabling CSRF prevention. See the Apollo Server 3 migration guide and the CSRF prevention docs for details.

If you are actively using the uploads feature with Apollo Server 2, then upgrading to v2.25.4 will not disable the feature and you will still be vulnerable. You should instead upgrade to v3.7 and enable the CSRF prevention feature.

If you are manually integrating the graphql-upload package with any version of Apollo Server (or any Node GraphQL server) and need to continue using the feature, then you must enable some sort of CSRF prevention feature to fix this vulnerability. We recommend the CSRF prevention feature in Apollo Server 3.7.

Workarounds

Instead of upgrading your Apollo Server 2 server, you can specify uploads: false to new ApolloServer to disable the graphql-upload integration and protect against CSRF mutations. (Only do this if you do not actually use the uploads feature in your server!) This will still leave your server vulnerable to non-mutation CSRF attacks such as timing attacks against query operations; you need to upgrade to v3.7 and enable CSRF prevention to protect against these attacks.

Related work

PR adding a Security section to the GraphQL multipart request spec

Release Notes

apollographql/apollo-server

fix(deps): update dependency apollo-server to v2.25.4 [security] #308

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fix(deps): update dependency apollo-server to v2.25.4 [security] #308

Conversation

renovate bot commented Mar 7, 2022 • edited Loading

GitHub Vulnerability Alerts

Impact

Apollo Server 3

Apollo Server 2

Apollo Server 1

Patches and workarounds

Upgrade Apollo Server

Upgrade Playground version only

Disable GraphQL Playground

Credit

For more information

Impact

Patches

Workarounds

Related work

Release Notes

Configuration

renovate bot commented Mar 7, 2022 •

edited

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