CPAN Security Advisory Database (CPANSA)

This is a database of the security advisories for the Perl modules uploaded to CPAN.

This is a hand-picked database maintained by the Perl community. See CONTRIBUTING or the issues to see how you might help.

The main mirror is briandfoy/cpan-security-advisory on GitHub, but there are other copies:

• https://github.com/briandfoy/cpan-security-advisory
• https://bitbucket.org/briandfoy/cpan-security-advisory
• https://gitlab.com/briandfoy/cpan-security-advisory

If you want to mirror a copy, clone the repo and send me the link. Let's make this more resilient by keeping the data in several places.

Sources

• metacpan.org - modules Changes files with security fixes
• CVE databases
  • https://nvd.nist.gov/feeds/xml/cve/misc/nvd-rss.xml
• OS distributions security advisory feeds:
  • Debian https://www.debian.org/security/dsa
  • FreeBSD http://vuxml.freebsd.org/freebsd/rss.xml
  • Gentoo https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/feed.rss
  • Ubuntu https://usn.ubuntu.com/rss.xml

Setup your environment

To run the various programs, you'll need some Perl modules. Install cpanminus if you don't already have it:

$ make -f Makefile.repo setup

Finding a record

$ perl util/find_record CVE-2022-1234

Making a new record

There's a utility to make a record for you from a CVE report:

$ perl util/make_record CVE-2022-1234

This tool tries to guess the distribution name, but sometimes it can't. If it doesn't guess the distribution name, simply run it again with the the distribution name you want:

$ perl util/make_record CVE-2022-1234 Some-Package

Then, add the report to the file cpansa/CPANSA-Some-Package.yml. If there are already reports in that file, remember to strip the --- from the top of the output you just created.

Record format

Id format: CPANSA-<dist-name>-<year>-<sequence>

• dist-name is the main module name, not necessarily the affected module in the distribution
• year is the year of the report or discovery, not necessarily the year the problem was introduced
• sequence is some integer. For single CVE reports, like CVE-2011-1589, use the same sequence number for easier maintenance

Database is in YAML format with a simple structure.

- id: CPANSA-Mojolicious-2011-01
  distribution: Mojolicious
  reported: 2011-04-05
  severity: critical
  description: >
    Directory traversal vulnerability in Path.pm in Mojolicious
    before 1.16 allows remote attackers to read arbitrary files via a
    %2f..%2f (encoded slash dot dot slash) in a URI.
  cves:
    - CVE-2011-1589
  references:
    - https://github.com/mojolicious/mojo/commit/b09854988c5b5b6a2ba53cc8661c4b2677da3818
    - https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2011-1589/
  affected_versions: "< 1.16"
  fixed_versions: ">= 1.16"

There may be an additional comments key with more information about the advisory, especially if the description comes from an external source, such as a CVE report.

If the vulnerability is due to an embedded external library, add the embedded_vulnerability key, e.g.

- affected_versions: ">=2.0.0"
  cves:
    - CVE-2021-46322
  description: >
    Duktape v2.99.99 was discovered to contain a SEGV vulnerability via the
    component duk_push_tval in duktape/duk_api_stack.c.
  distribution: JavaScript-Duktape
  fixed_versions: ~
  id: CPANSA-JavaScript-Duktape-2021-46322
  references:
    - https://github.com/svaarala/duktape/issues/2448
    - https://github.com/mamod/JavaScript-Duktape/issues/41
  reported: 2022-01-20
  severity: medium
  embedded_vulnerability:
    name: duktape
    distributed_version: "2.2.0"

In some cases, the embedded external library may be part of another library. Add the parent library in brackets, e.g.

  embedded_vulnerability:
     distributed_version: "1.2.11"
     name: zlib[libgit2]

There may be cases whether the Perl distribution relies on a particular version of another library with a security vulnerability that is installed on the host system, rather than embedded. This may be indicayed with the external_vulnerability key:

  external_vulnerability:
     distributed_version: "<=6.3"
     name: readline

Check the results

Check all the files for basic YAML:

$ make test_all

Checking all the files can take a minute, so you can also just check the files that have changed:

$ make test_new

Run the lint target to check all of the report files:

$ make lint

Command-line checks

For command line checks take a look at CPAN-Audit module, or the cpan-audit repo.

$ cpan-audit module Catalyst '>7.0'

To see your new report, you'll have to regenerate the CPANSA::DB database since CPAN::Audit does everything locally. That happens in the cpan-audit repo, where this repo is a submodule.

Maintainer

brian d foy ([email protected]). If you'd like to help, just let me know by opening as issue. I'm happy to add people as committers on this repo. See [CONTRIBUTING.md] for more info.

Credits

• The original author and maintainer was Viacheslav Tykhanovskyi.
• Takumi Akiyama
• Takafumi Onaka
• Mala
• Robert Rothenberg

Contribution

If you know of a security vulnerability that is not present in our database, feel free to contribute with a Pull Request. Let's make it as complete as possible!