Create-react-app: High severity vulnerability found in fsevents >node-pre-gyp >tar

[kaiwen-zhang-ck]

Using Synk, I found security vulnerability from package node-pre-gyp in the package tar. This was discovered on Synk April 4 2019.
Please see Synk screenshots

You can see details about this vulnerability here
https://snyk.io/vuln/SNYK-JS-TAR-174125

Because, I imagine many teams will not be able to use React Scripts. What is the best way to go about this? I filed an issue with the node-pre-gyp team but it seems like to fix this we will need fsevents to be updated as well. Any ideas?

[amdp]

npm i node-pre-gyp

[iansu]

There isn't really anything we can do to fix this, other than updating these dependencies when new versions are released.

[amdp]

If you just install node-gyp, you'll have that issue. Installing node-pre-gyp too removes the problem.
The tar dependency is a problem of node-pre-gyp, not of node-gyp.

[cruiserkernan]

Apparently there is a version 2.0 of fsevents that does not have a dependency to node-pre-gyp. Maybe bumping the version of fsevents could fix this. I'm not sure if that would cause a breaking change to react-scripts.

[leepowelldev]

If you just install node-gyp, you'll have that issue. Installing node-pre-gyp too removes the problem.
The tar dependency is a problem of node-pre-gyp, not of node-gyp.

Sadly this doesn't work for me - still get the audit errors

[amdp]

Then another option I read about is to play with package-lock.json (set all tar to updated version), and use npm ci instead of i

source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15806152/how-do-i-override-nested-npm-dependency-versions

hope this helps more than my previous

[levimeahan]

There isn't really anything we can do to fix this, other than updating these dependencies when new versions are released.

Given that there is a high security risk vulnerability, would it be possible to push out a minor/patch update for react-scripts that does just that?

[verde79]

@kaiwen-zhang-ck managed to get a fix https://github.com/mapbox/node-pre-gyp/issues/446

I've just updated the tar version in the package-lock.json, saved and ran npm audit again, and yeah it sorts it

[vaibhav-kona]

Is it a good practice to change package-lock.json directly? I thought we should not

[verde79]

@adred8 I'm not sure if it's good practice, seen plenty of people saying to do it, but I don't know for sure.

At any rate, I've noticed that after updating package-lock and doing an npm install, the package lock is overwritten to the vulnerable version again. My current thinking on this is that as npm audit only looks at package.json and package-lock and not node_modules, updating package-lock to a secure version of tar(>4.4.2) doesn't eliminate the insecure version in node_modules.
fsevents is an optional dependency, requiring a mac. As I'm on windows, can anyone with a mac confirm fsevents is in node_modules still?
Also unless I'm wrong because the dependency is only installed on mac, windows users could ignore the warning?

[amdp]

In the article I cited they say that if you use npm ci (clean install) it shouldn't overwrite the changes you did in the .lock.json
Give it a try. And no, I don't think it is a nice practice, you are just doing it as a quick fix.

[erwanriou]

Same issue here on ubuntu.. I would be happy of this small fix in the react-script since we are now dealing with high vulnerabilities...

[verde79]

@amdp I shall give it a try. I wasn't doing it as a quick fix, I'm pretty new to dealing with dependency trees and trying to get my head around doing things well and understanding why

[amdp]

Keep in mind I am a noob as well so I am -maybe- just good at explaining what other people were showing as a solution

[verde79]

kaiwen had posted the answer in another thread, which I shared above. I was trying to point people with the same issue to his solution, and confirm that it worked for me (even though it later didn't seem to be. Hopefully get time tomorrow to look at it again!

[HarisSpahija]

Updating all "tar" locations in package-lock.json to use "tar": "^4.4.8" manually solved my issue.

[glrodasz]

@HarisSpahija But how did you do that if node-gyp requires ^2.2?

[sridevs]

Updating all "tar" locations in package-lock.json to use "tar": "^4.4.8" manually solved my issue.

That solves the issue, but its not a good practice to directly update dependencies in package-lock.json.

[sridevs]

There isn't really anything we can do to fix this, other than updating these dependencies when new versions are released.

Exactly, you need to update the versions, especially all the tar version under react-scripts package to 4.4.2 and above to remediate Arbitrary File Overwrite vulnerability.

[iansu]

Yes, like I said, we will update these packages. A new version of fsevents has been released and there is already a PR updating our dependencies.

[ereztdev]

we there yet? ;P Just came across it now.

[ianschmitz]

This should be fixed by our 3.0 release. Can you confirm?

[svenlaater]

@ianschmitz yes, 3.0 is good.