Awesome Electron.js hacking & pentesting resources

This list aims to cover Electron.js security related topics.

Feel free to contribute by opening a PR if you think something is missing to this list!

Presentations

• "Electronegativity - A Study of Electron Security", Luca Carettoni, BlackHat USA 2017 & video
• "MarkDoom: How I Hacked Every Major IDE in 2 Weeks", Matt Austin, APPSEC Cali 2018 & video
• "Building a secure web browser in Electron", Yan @bcrypt, Electron Meetup 2/2018
• "Electron: Abusing the lack of context isolation", Masato Kinugawa, CureCon 2018
• "Only An Electron Away From Code Execution", Silvia Väli, Hack.lu 2018
• "Preloading Insecurity In Your Electron", Luca Carettoni, BlackHat Asia 2019 & video
• "app setAsDefaultRCE Client: Electron, scheme handlers and stealthy security patches", Juho Nurminen, ZeroNights 2019 and video
• "Full Steam Ahead: Remotely Executing Code in Modern Desktop Application Architectures", Thomas Shadwell, INFILTRATE 2019
• "Democratizing Electron.js Security", Luca Carettoni, Covalence 2020 SF & video
• "Remote Code Execution on Electron Applications", PwnFunction
• "Shifting left for Electron.js security", Ksenia Peguero, Midwinter Night's Con 2020
• "How to harden your Electron app", Mitchell Cohen, NorthSec 2021
• "Hacking ELECTRON: JavaScript Desktop Applications w/ 7aSecurity", John Hammond
• "ElectroVolt - Pwning Popular Desktop apps while uncovering new attack surface on Electron", Mohan Sri Rama Krishna Max Garrett Aaditya Purani William Bowling, BlackHat USA 2022 and Nullcon Goa 2022 & video

Open-Source & Commercial Tools

• Electronegativity, a static code analysis tool to find vulnerabilities in Electron-based applications code & slides
• Devtron, an Electron DevTools extension
• Fiddle, to quickly create and play with small Electron experiments across different Electron versions
• ElectroNG Premium SAST tool built after Electronegativity to help automate security reviews

Papers

• "Electron Security Checklist", Luca Carettoni, 2017
• "Analysis of Electron-based Applications to Identify Xss Flaws Escalating to Code Execution in Open-source Applications", Silvia Väli, 2017
• "Pentest-Report Ethereum Mist", Cure53, 2017
• "Pentest-Report Frame Electron App", Cure53, 2018
• "An Analysis of the State of Electron Security in the Wild", Benjamin Altpeter, 2020
• "Electrolint and Security of Electron Applications", Ksenia Peguero, 2021

Vulnerabilities Write-Ups and Exploits

• "Hacking Mattermost #2: Year of Node.js on the Desktop", Andreas Lindh
• "Modern Alchemy: Turning XSS into RCE", Doyensec Blog
• "Subverting Electron Apps via Insecure Preload", Doyensec Blog
• "CVE-2018-15685 - Electron WebPreferences Remote Code Execution Finding", Matt Austin, PoC
• "Remote Code Execution in Rocket.Chat Desktop", Matt Austin
• "Rocket.Chat Cross-Site Scripting leading to Remote Code Execution CVE-2020-15926", Pawel Wylecial
• "Rocket.Chat Client-side Remote Code Execution", SSD Advisory
• "Remote Code Execution in Wordpress Desktop", Matt Austin
• "URL Spoof / Brave Shield Bypass", Matt Austin
• "[Simplenote for Windows] Client RCE via External JavaScript Inclusion leveraging Electron", @ysx
• "XSS in Steam react chat client", @zemnmez
• "Security bug in Google Hangouts Chat desktop application – how to make Open Redirect great again", Michał Bentkowski
• "Critical Security Flaw Found in WhatsApp Desktop Platform Allowing Cybercriminals Read From The File System Access", Gal Weizman
• "signal-desktop HTML tag injection" and "signal-desktop HTML tag injection variant 2, Ivan A. Barrera Oro"
• "Signature Validation Bypass Leading to RCE In Electron-Updater", Doyensec Blog
• "Electron Windows Protocol Handler MITM/RCE (bypass for CVE-2018-1000006 fix)", Doyensec Blog
• "Top 5 Day Two: Electron Boogaloo - A case for technodiversity", Vincent Lee
• "Exploiting Electron RCE in Exodus wallet", Tomas Lažauninkas
• "Chaining Three Bugs to Get RCE in Microsoft AttackSurfaceAnalyzer", Parsia Hakimian
• "Open Sesame: Escalating Open Redirect to RCE with Electron Code Review", Eugene Lim
• "From Markdown to RCE in Atom", Lukas Reschke
• "Visual Studio Code silently fixed a remote code execution vulnerability", CodeColorist
• "OVE-20210809-0001 Visual Studio Code .ipynb Jupyter Notebook XSS (Arbitrary File Read)", Justin Steven
• "Visual Studio Code Jupyter Notebook RCE ( CVE-2021-26437)", Doyensec Blog
• "Visual Studio Code - Remote Code Execution in Restricted Mode (CVE-2021-43908)", TheGrandPew and s1r1us
• "Remote Code Execution in Slack desktop apps + bonus", Oskars Vegeris
• "Important, Spoofing - zero-click, wormable, cross-platform remote code execution in Microsoft Teams", Oskars Vegeris
• "Cross-site scripting (XSS) in Microsoft Teams", Evan Grant
• "Dependency Confusion Vulnerability in Microsoft Teams", Matt Austin
• "RCE in Jitsi Meet Electron prior to 2.3.0 due to insecure use of shell.openExternal() (CVE-2020-25019)", Benjamin Altpeter
• "Insecure use of shell.openExternal() in Wire Desktop", Benjamin Altpeter
• "Jitsi Meet Electron – Arbitrary Client Remote Code Execution (CVE-2020-27162)", Robert Wessen and "Jitsi Meet Electron – Limited Certificate Validation Bypass (CVE-2020-27161)", Robert Wessen
• "Brave Arbitrary IPC Messages via Prototype Pollution in Function.prototype.call", Masato Kinugawa, "via Prototype Pollution in Function.prototype.apply", Masato Kinugawa and "via Prototype Pollution in Array.prototype.push", Masato Kinugawa
• "Prototype Pollution Vulnerabilities in Electron Apps", @s1r1u5
• "Websites Can Run Arbitrary Code on Machines Running the 'PlayStation Now' Application", Parsia Hakimian
• "Discord Desktop App RCE", Masato Kinugawa
• "Discord Desktop - Remote Code Execution", s1r1us
• "Vulnerability in Electron-based Application: Unintentionally Giving Malicious Code Room to Run", CertiK
• "Joplin ElectronJS based Client: from XSS to RCE", Jaroslav Lobacevski
• "Facebook Messenger Desktop App Arbitrary File Read", Renwa
• "RCE in Mattermost Desktop earlier than 4.2.0", Nathan Lowe
• "GitHub Desktop RCE (OSX)", André Baptista
• "RCE in GitHub Desktop < 2.9.4", Vladimir Metnew
• "CVE-2020–16608", Sourov Ghosh
• "HEY Desktop RCE Chain", Doyensec Team
• "CVE-2018-1000136 - Electron nodeIntegration Bypass", Brendan Scarvell
• "Remote Code Execution on Element Desktop Application using Node Integration in Sub Frames Bypass", s1r1us and TheGrandPew
• "CVE-2022-29247 - Disable Electron Context Isolation or enable Node Integration in SubFrames", s1r1us
• "Weaponizing Chrome CVE-2023-2033 for RCE in Electron", Turb0
• "Evernote RCE: From PDF.js font-injection to All-platform Electron exposed ipcRenderer with listened BrokerBridge Remote-Code Execution", Patrick Peng

Blog Posts and Articles

• "Security, Native Capabilities, and Your Responsibility", Electron's Documentation
• "Instrumenting Electron Apps for Security Testing", Doyensec Blog
• "Reasonably Secure Electron", Joe DeMesy & code
• "As It Stands - Electron Security" and "An update on Electron Security", Dean Kerr
• "Exploiting Electron Applications using Debug Feature", Esecurity Lab
• "Why Electron apps can’t store your secrets confidentially: ` — inspect`option", Vladimir Metnew
• "The App Sandbox", Charlie Hess
• "Abusing Electron apps to bypass macOS' security controls", Wojciech Reguła
• "The dangers of Electron's shell.openExternal() — many paths to remote code execution", Benjamin Altpeter
• "1-click RCE in Electron Applications", Pavel Shabarkin
• "How to patch apps with ElectronAsarIntegrity on macOS", Karol Mazurek & electron_patcher.py
• "Using Discord Desktop for Backdoor Persistence", Turb0

Books

• "Cross-Platform Desktop Applications Using Node, Electron, and NW.js", Paul B. Jensen
• "Electron in Action", Steve Kinney

Related lists

• Awesome Node.js Security
• Awesome Electron