Headline
CVE-2023-22460: "json" codec may panic if asked to encode bytes
go-ipld-prime is an implementation of the InterPlanetary Linked Data (IPLD) spec interfaces, a batteries-included codec implementations of IPLD for CBOR and JSON, and tooling for basic operations on IPLD objects. Encoding data which contains a Bytes kind Node will pass a Bytes token to the JSON encoder which will panic as it doesn’t expect to receive Bytes tokens. Such an encode should be treated as an error, as plain JSON should not be able to encode Bytes. This only impacts uses of the json codec. dag-json is not impacted. Use of json as a decoder is not impacted. This issue is fixed in v0.19.0. As a workaround, one may prefer the dag-json codec, which has the ability to encode bytes.
Impact
Encoding data which contains a Bytes kind Node will pass a Bytes token to the JSON encoder which will panic as it doesn’t expect to receive Bytes tokens. Such an encode should be treated as an error, as plain JSON should not be able to encode Bytes.
This only impacts uses of the “json” codec, “dag-json” is not impacted. Use of “json” as a decoder is not impacted.
Patches
Fixed in v0.19.0.
Workarounds
Prefer the “dag-json” codec which has the ability to encode bytes.
References
See fix in #472
Credit
Thanks to @hacdias for discovering this error!
Related news
`go-ipld-prime` is a series of Go interfaces for manipulating IPLD data and a Go module that contains the `go-ipld-prime/codec/json` codec. ### Impact Encoding data which contains a `Bytes` kind Node will pass a `Bytes` token to the JSON encoder which will panic as it doesn't expect to receive `Bytes` tokens. Such an encoding should be treated as an error, as plain JSON should not be able to encode Bytes. **This only impacts uses of the "json" codec, "dag-json" is not impacted.** Use of "json" as a decoder is not impacted. ### Patches Fixed in v0.19.0. ### Workarounds Prefer the "dag-json" codec which has the ability to [encode bytes](https://ipld.io/specs/codecs/dag-json/spec/#bytes). ### References See fix in [#472](https://github.com/ipld/go-ipld-prime/pull/472)