The Deno sandbox may be unexpectedly weakened by allowing file read/write access to privileged files in various locations on Unix and Windows platforms. For example, reading /proc/self/environ may provide access equivalent to --allow-env, and writing /proc/self/mem may provide access equivalent to --allow-all.

Users who grant read and write access to the entire filesystem may not realize that these access to these files may have additional, unintended consequences. The documentation did not reflect that this practice should be undertaken to increase the strength of the security sandbox.

Impact

Users who run code with --allow-read or --allow-write may unexpectedly end up granting additional permissions via file-system operations.

Patches

Deno 1.43 and above require explicit --allow-all access to read or write /etc, /dev on unix platform (as well as /proc and /sys on linux platforms), and any path starting with \\ on Windows.

Workarounds

The security sandbox in previous versions of Deno allows for denial of access to these files, but it requires an explicit addition of deny flags: --deny-read=/dev --deny-read=/sys --deny-read=/proc --deny-read=/etc --deny-write=/dev --deny-write=/sys --deny-write=/proc --deny-write=/etc. Note that symlinks in allowed locations may defeat this protection in earlier versions of Deno.

Reporters

This vulnerability was reported by a number of analysts. Thanks to oliver@secfault-security.com, finn@secfault-security.com, @leesh3288, and @cristianstaicu for their reports and analysis.