CVE-2024-39698 Information

Description

electron-updater allows for automatic updates for Electron apps. The file packages/electron-updater/src/windowsExecutableCodeSignatureVerifier.ts implements the signature validation routine for Electron applications on Windows. Because of the surrounding shell a first pass by cmd.exe expands any environment variable found in command-line above. This creates a situation where verifySignature() can be tricked into validating the certificate of a different file than the one that was just downloaded. If the step is successful the malicious update will be executed even if its signature is invalid. This attack assumes a compromised update manifest (server compromise Man-in-the-Middle attack if fetched over HTTP Cross-Site Scripting to point the application to a malicious updater server etc.). The patch is available starting from 6.3.0-alpha.6.

Reference

https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder/security/advisories/GHSA-9jxc-qjr9-vjxq https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder/pull/8295 https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder/commit/ac2e6a25aa491c1ef5167a552c19fc2085cd427f https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-builder/blob/140e2f0eb0df79c2a46e35024e96d0563355fc89/packages/electron-updater/src/windowsExecutableCodeSignatureVerifier.ts#L35-L41