Scratch VmApplication · Mit

CVE-2020-14000

CRITICAL · 9.8 CVSS v3.1 Published 2020-07-16
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 0.2.0-prerelease.20200714185213 or later.
See remediation →
100/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
MIT Lifelong Kindergarten Scratch scratch-vm before 0.2.0-prerelease.20200714185213 loads extension URLs from untrusted project.json files with certain _ characters, resulting in remote code execution because the URL's content is treated as a script and is executed as a worker. The responsible code is getExtensionIdForOpcode in serialization/sb3.js. The use of _ is incompatible with a protection mechanism in older versions, in which URLs were split and consequently deserialization attacks were prevented. NOTE: the scratch.mit.edu hosted service is not affected because of the lack of worker scripts.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-502

The application rebuilds objects from attacker-supplied serialized data, and the act of rebuilding can trigger dangerous code paths. In many runtimes this leads straight to remote code execution. The durable fix is to avoid deserializing untrusted input — or to use a strict, type-limited format with integrity checks.

General guidance for the deserialization of untrusted data class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
Scratch VmApplication
Affected:< 0.2.0-prerelease.20200714185213

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 0.2.0-prerelease.20200714185213 or later
Fixed in 0.2.0-prerelease.20200714185213
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

0.2.0-prerelease.20200714185213 or later stable release

  1. Identify the currently installed scratch-vm version in your project using npm list scratch-vm or your package manager
  2. Upgrade scratch-vm to version 0.2.0-prerelease.20200714185213 or later by running: npm install [email protected] or npm install scratch-vm@latest
  3. After upgrading, verify the fix by checking that serialization/sb3.js contains the patch from PR #2476 which adds proper URL validation in getExtensionIdForOpcode
  4. Rebuild and redeploy your application to ensure the patched version is in production
  5. Test that legitimate extension loading still functions correctly with your project files
Caveat No breaking changes documented for this security patch; the change only adds validation to prevent RCE via malicious project.json files

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

We can perform the upgrade in your staging environment and verify nothing breaks — typical engagement from $3,550. Get the upgrade done

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2020-14000 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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What this is

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What belongs here
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  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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