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High severity vulnerability that affects System.Management.Automation

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Sep 12, 2019 in PowerShell/PowerShell • Updated Jan 9, 2023

Package

nuget System.Management.Automation (NuGet)

Affected versions

>= 6.2.0, < 6.2.3
< 6.1.6

Patched versions

6.2.3
6.1.6

Description

Microsoft Security Advisory CVE-2019-1301: Denial of Service Vulnerability in .NET Core

Microsoft Security Advisory CVE-2019-1301: Denial of Service Vulnerability in PowerShell Core

Executive Summary

A denial of service vulnerability exists when PowerShell Core or .NET Core improperly handles web requests. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could cause a denial of service against a PowerShell Core scripts.

The update addresses the vulnerability by correcting how the .NET Core handles web requests.

System administrators are advised to update PowerShell Core to an unaffected version (see affected software.)

Discussion

Please open a support question to discussion the PowerShell aspects of this advisory.
Please use dotnet/announcements#121 for discussion of the .NET aspects this advisory.

Affected Software

The vulnerability affects PowerShell Core prior to the following versions:

PowerShell Core Version Fixed in
6.1 6.1.6
6.2 6.2.3
7.0 unaffected

Advisory FAQ

How do I know if I am affected?

If all of the following are true:

  1. Run pwsh -v, then, check the version in the table in Affected Software to see if your version of PowerShell Core is affected.
  2. If you are running a version of PowerShell Core where the executable is not pwsh or pwsh.exe, then you are affected. This only existed for preview version of 6.0.

How do I update to an unaffected version?

Follow the instructions at Installing PowerShell Core to install the latest version of PowerShell Core.

Other Information

Reporting Security Issues

If you have found a potential security issue in PowerShell Core,
please email details to [email protected].

Support

You can ask questions about this issue on GitHub in the PowerShell organization.
This is located at https://github.com/PowerShell/.
The Announcements repo (https://github.com/PowerShell/Announcements)
will contain this bulletin as an issue and will include a link to a discussion issue where you can ask questions.

What if the update breaks my script or module?

You can uninstall the newer version of PowerShell Core and install the previous version of PowerShell Core.
This should be treated as a temporary measure.
Therefore, the script or module should be updated to work with the patched version of PowerShell Core.

Acknowledgments

Paul Ryman of VMware Sydney Engineering Team

Microsoft recognizes the efforts of those in the security community who help us protect customers through coordinated vulnerability disclosure.

See acknowledgments for more information.

External Links

CVE-2019-1301

Revisions

V1.0 (September 12, 2019): Advisory published.

Version 1.0
Last Updated 2019-09-12

References

@TravisEz13 TravisEz13 published to PowerShell/PowerShell Sep 12, 2019
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Sep 13, 2019
Reviewed Jun 16, 2020
Last updated Jan 9, 2023

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS score

0.234%
(61st percentile)

Weaknesses

No CWEs

CVE ID

CVE-2019-1301

GHSA ID

GHSA-62gw-3rmj-wmp2

Source code

No known source code
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