Decoded: Small Business Cybersecurity News & Insights

Browsershot Vulnerability: Improper Input Validation Opens the Door to Arbitrary File Reading

Published Date: December 20, 2024

Package Affected Versions Patched Versions Severity
📦 spatie/browsershot (Composer) < 5.0.3 5.0.3 High

Description

The Browsershot Improper Input Validation vulnerability is a high-severity issue affecting versions of the spatie/browsershot package prior to 5.0.3. The vulnerability arises from inadequate validation of URLs passed to the setUrl method.

What’s the problem?


Attackers can exploit this flaw by passing URLs like view-source:file://. This sneaky trick can let them read arbitrary local files on the server, potentially exposing sensitive data.

 

Who’s affected?


If you’re using a version of spatie/browsershot earlier than 5.0.3, your system is at risk. This is particularly concerning if your application processes user-supplied input for generating screenshots or PDFs.

Patches & Workarounds


  • Upgrade the package: Update spatie/browsershot to version 5.0.3 or later. Run the following command in your project:

    composer update spatie/browsershot


  • Sanitize inputs: If updating isn’t immediately possible, ensure that any input passed to setUrl is rigorously sanitized to block URLs with schemes like view-source or file.

  • Test your application: After upgrading or patching, test your application to ensure functionality remains intact and the vulnerability is closed.

References

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-21549

https://security.snyk.io/vuln/SNYK-PHP-SPATIEBROWSERSHOT-8533023
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