Original Post: CocoaPods vulnerabilities highlight risks in dependency managers
Dependency Managers: CocoaPods
CocoaPods is a popular dependency manager for Swift and Objective-C projects, streamlining the integration of third-party libraries. The project relies on sponsorship and community maintenance. However, security researchers from E.V.A Information Security found three critical vulnerabilities in CocoaPods that could compromise how applications download packages, posing significant risks:
Discovered Vulnerabilities
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Unauthorized Ownership over Orphaned Pods (CVE-2024-38368):
- Server migration in 2014 reset Pod ownership, leaving around 2,000 Pods unclaimed. Before October 2023, anyone could claim these Pods without verification, allowing for potential malicious takeovers.
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Remote Code Execution on the CocoaPods ‘Trunk’ Server (CVE-2024-38366):
- By exploiting vulnerabilities in the RFC-822 package used for email validation, researchers achieved remote code execution on the CocoaPods server. This access could allow dumping session tokens, poisoning traffic, or shutting down the server.
- Zero-Click Account Takeover (CVE-2024-38367):
- Due to improper handling of the X-Forwarded-Host HTTP header, an attacker could spoof the header during session creation, directing verification links to malicious domains and taking over accounts without user interaction. Email security solutions inadvertently assisted by clicking validation links, completing the takeover process.
Implications
These vulnerabilities could lead to compromised applications, data breaches, and unauthorized access, undermining trust in application security. Though remediated by October 2023, the potential prior exploitation remains unknown. Sustained support for dependency managers like CocoaPods is crucial for enhancing security.
For more detailed information on the vulnerabilities, refer to the full analysis by E.V.A Information Security researchers.
Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) and others are working on establishing principles for securing package repositories to mitigate such risks.
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