Vulnerability · Published Sep 26, 2024 · Assigned by GitHub_M

CVE-2024-47174Credential leak when credentials are used with `<nix/fetchurl.nix>`

Medium 5.9

In plain English

A medium-severity improper authentication in nix from NixOS. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.3% (higher than 23% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.

Severity (CVSS 3.1)5.9Medium
Exploit odds (30 days)0.3%top 77.5% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none
Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

Nix is a package manager for Linux and other Unix systems. Starting in version 1.11 and prior to versions 2.18.8 and 2.24.8, `<nix/fetchurl.nix>` did not verify TLS certificates on HTTPS connections. This could lead to connection details such as full URLs or credentials leaking in case of a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack. `<nix/fetchurl.nix>` is also known as the builtin derivation builder `builtin:fetchurl`. It's not to be confused with the evaluation-time function `builtins.fetchurl`, which was not affected by this issue. A user may be affected by the risk of leaking credentials if they have a `netrc` file for authentication, or rely on derivations with `impureEnvVars` set to use credentials from the environment. In addition, the commonplace trust-on-first-use (TOFU) technique of updating dependencies by specifying an invalid hash and obtaining it from a remote store was also vulnerable to a MITM injecting arbitrary store objects. This also applied to the impure derivations experimental feature. Note that this may also happen when using Nixpkgs fetchers to obtain new hashes when not using the fake hash method, although that mechanism is not implemented in Nix itself but rather in Nixpkgs using a fixed-output derivation. The behavior was introduced in version 1.11 to make it consistent with the Nixpkgs `pkgs.fetchurl` and to make `<nix/fetchurl.nix>` work in the derivation builder sandbox, which back then did not have access to the CA bundles by default. Nowadays, CA bundles are bind-mounted on Linux. This issue has been fixed in Nix 2.18.8 and 2.24.8. As a workaround, implement (authenticated) fetching with `pkgs.fetchurl` from Nixpkgs, using `impureEnvVars` and `curlOpts` as needed.

Affected packages & fixed versions

EcosystemPackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian:12nixno fix listedDEBIAN-CVE-2024-47174
Debian:13nix2.24.8+dfsg-1DEBIAN-CVE-2024-47174
Debian:14nix2.24.8+dfsg-1DEBIAN-CVE-2024-47174

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
NixOS nix >= 1.11, < 2.18.8>= 2.24.0, < 2.24.8

Weakness: CWE-287 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

References