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MEDIUM5.8

GHSA-m9g3-3g99-mhpx

eventsource-encoder vulnerable to SSE event injection via unsanitized `event` and `id` fields

Quick fix

GHSA-m9g3-3g99-mhpx — eventsource-encoder: upgrade to the fixed version with the command below.

npm install eventsource-encoder@1.0.2

Details

### Summary

`eventsource-encoder` does not sanitize the `event` or `id` fields of an `EventSourceMessage` before serializing them. An attacker who controls either field can inject arbitrary Server-Sent Events line terminators (`\n`, `\r`, or `\r\n`) and thereby forge additional SSE fields or entire messages on the stream. This is similar in spirit to [GHSA-4hxc-9384-m385](https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-4hxc-9384-m385) (h3), but the vulnerable fields are `event`/`id` rather than `data`/`comment`. These are less likely to be user-controllable, but should still be sanitized.

### Details

In `src/encode.ts`, `encodeMessage` interpolates `event` and `id` into the output without inspecting them for line terminators:

```ts if (message.event) { output += `event: ${message.event}\n` } // ... if (typeof message.id === 'string' || typeof message.id === 'number') { output += `id: ${message.id}\n` } ```

The SSE specification treats `\r`, `\n`, and `\r\n` as line terminators. A `\n` (or `\r`) embedded in either field is rendered as the end of that field, allowing the rest of the input to be interpreted by the client as new SSE fields.

By contrast, `data` and `comment` already normalize all three line-terminator forms via `NEWLINES_RE = /(\r\n|\r|\n)/g`, so they are not affected.

### Proof of concept

```js import {encode} from 'eventsource-encoder'

// Attacker-controlled value flows into `event` const userSuppliedTopic = 'message\nevent: admin\ndata: {"role":"admin"}'

console.log(encode({event: userSuppliedTopic, data: 'hello'})) ```

Output:

``` event: message event: admin data: {"role":"admin"} data: hello

```

The browser sees two events: a forged `admin` event with attacker-chosen payload, followed by the legitimate `message` event. The same primitive works through `id` for any string id value.

### Impact

If untrusted input is passed into the `event` or `id` field of a message, an attacker can:

- Spoof events of arbitrary type (rerouting payloads to handlers the attacker chooses) - Inject additional SSE fields (`data:`, `id:`, `retry:`) into the stream - Split a single `encode()` call into multiple distinct browser events - Override the client's `Last-Event-ID` via injected `id:` lines

The vulnerability requires that an application places attacker-controlled data into `event` or `id`. Applications that only put trusted, statically-defined values into these fields are not affected.

### Patches

Fixed in `eventsource-encoder@1.0.2`. The `event` and string `id` fields are now validated; any value containing `\r` or `\n` causes the encoder to throw a `TypeError` rather than emit a malformed stream.

### Workarounds

If users cannot upgrade, validate or strip line terminators from any untrusted value before passing it to `encode` / `encodeMessage`:

```js function safeSingleLine(value) { if (/[\r\n]/.test(value)) throw new Error('SSE field must be single-line') return value }

encode({event: safeSingleLine(topic), id: safeSingleLine(id), data}) ```

### Resources

- Related advisory (different package, same class): https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-4hxc-9384-m385 - SSE spec, line terminators: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/server-sent-events.html#parsing-an-event-stream

### Credit

Discovered while reviewing in light of GHSA-4hxc-9384-m385.

Are you affected?

Enter the version of the package you're using.

Affected packages

npm/eventsource-encoder
Introduced in: 0Fixed in: 1.0.2
Fixnpm install eventsource-encoder@1.0.2

References