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Tauri's Updater Private Keys Possibly Leaked via Vite Environment Variables

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Oct 19, 2023 in tauri-apps/tauri • Updated Dec 28, 2023

Package

npm @tauri-apps/cli (npm)

Affected versions

>= 2.0.0-alpha.0, < 2.0.0-alpha.16
>= 1.0.0, < 1.5.6

Patched versions

2.0.0-alpha.16
1.5.6
cargo tauri-cli (Rust)
>= 2.0.0-alpha.0, < 2.0.0-alpha.16
>= 1.0.0, < 1.5.6
2.0.0-alpha.16
1.5.6

Description

Impact

This advisory is not describing a vulnerability in the Tauri code base itself but a commonly used misconfiguration which could lead to leaking of the private key and updater key password into bundled Tauri applications using the Vite frontend in a specific configuration.

The Tauri documentation used an insecure example configuration in the Vite guide to showcase how to use Tauri together with Vite.

Copying the following snippet envPrefix: ['VITE_', 'TAURI_'], from this guide into the vite.config.ts of a Tauri project possibly leads to bundling the TAURI_PRIVATE_KEY and TAURI_KEY_PASSWORD into the Vite frontend code and therefore leaking this value to the debug built of a Tauri application.

The value is automatically bundled into debug builds but for production builds it is not embedded, as long as it is not directly referenced in the frontend code. Vite statically replaces these values in production builds. This reduces the amount of affected applications to a very small amount of affected applications.

To verify if you are affected you can search for the private key value or the TAURI_PRIVATE_KEY variable inside the release build frontend assets (dist/).

Example: grep -r "TAURI_PRIVATE_KEY" dist/

Using only the envPrefix: ['VITE_'], or any other framework than Vite means you are not impacted by this advisory.

Patches

The documentation has been patched but as the root cause is not in Tauri itself the issue is not fixed by updating Tauri.
The vite.config.ts configuration of the project needs to be adapted.

We recommend rotating your updater private key if you are affected by this (requires Tauri CLI >=1.5.5). After updating the envPrefix configuration, generate a new private key with tauri signer generate, saving the new private key and updating the updater's pubkey value on tauri.conf.json with the new public key. To update your existing application, the next application build must be signed with the older private key in order to be accepted by the existing application.

Workarounds

The envPrefix: ['VITE_'],should be used and the desired TAURI variables manually added.
Respective these variables could be added TAURI_PLATFORM, TAURI_ARCH, TAURI_FAMILY, TAURI_PLATFORM_VERSION, TAURI_PLATFORM_TYPE and TAURI_DEBUG without leaking sensitive information.

We urge affected users to implement the workaround as the 1.x branch will not receive a general prevention fix as it would break systems.

References

The issue was originally disclosed in our discord here.
The affected guide is https://tauri.app/v1/guides/getting-started/setup/vite/.

Update: We lowered the severity from high to low, as the likelihood of impact was found to only affect a very limited amount of applications.

Update2: We changed the affected versions to make clear that after 2.0.0-alpha.16 or 1.5.6 the potentially vulnerable recommendation was no longer visible on our website and should not affect projects by default. A lot of users were confused and we believe this advisory reached the necessary user base.

References

@lucasfernog lucasfernog published to tauri-apps/tauri Oct 19, 2023
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Oct 20, 2023
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Oct 20, 2023
Reviewed Oct 20, 2023
Last updated Dec 28, 2023

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Local
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N

EPSS score

0.043%
(10th percentile)

CVE ID

CVE-2023-46115

GHSA ID

GHSA-2rcp-jvr4-r259

Source code

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