CodeQL documentation
CodeQL resources

Log injection

ID: js/log-injection
Kind: path-problem
Security severity: 6.1
Severity: error
Precision: medium
Tags:
   - security
   - external/cwe/cwe-117
Query suites:
   - javascript-security-extended.qls
   - javascript-security-and-quality.qls

Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository

If unsanitized user input is written to a log entry, a malicious user may be able to forge new log entries.

Forgery can occur if a user provides some input with characters that are interpreted when the log output is displayed. If the log is displayed as a plain text file, then new line characters can be used by a malicious user. If the log is displayed as HTML, then arbitrary HTML may be included to spoof log entries.

Recommendation

User input should be suitably sanitized before it is logged.

If the log entries are in plain text then line breaks should be removed from user input, using String.prototype.replace or similar. Care should also be taken that user input is clearly marked in log entries.

For log entries that will be displayed in HTML, user input should be HTML-encoded before being logged, to prevent forgery and other forms of HTML injection.

Example

In the first example, a username, provided by the user, is logged using `console.info`. In the first case, it is logged without any sanitization. In the second case, the username is used to build an error that is logged using `console.error`. If a malicious user provides `username=Guest%0a[INFO]+User:+Admin%0a` as a username parameter, the log entry will be splitted in two different lines, where the second line will be `[INFO]+User:+Admin`.

const http = require('http');
const url = require('url');

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
    let q = url.parse(req.url, true);

    console.info(`[INFO] User: ${q.query.username}`); // BAD: User input logged as-is
})

server.listen(3000, '127.0.0.1', () => {});

In the second example, String.prototype.replace is used to ensure no line endings are present in the user input.

const http = require('http');
const url = require('url');

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
    let q = url.parse(req.url, true);

    // GOOD: remove newlines from user controlled input before logging
    let username = q.query.username.replace(/\n|\r/g, "");

    console.info(`[INFO] User: ${username}`);
});

server.listen(3000, '127.0.0.1', () => {});

References

  • © GitHub, Inc.
  • Terms
  • Privacy