BREAKING: OpenAI says it found a critical flaw in Brotli, a widely used compression library built into software like Node.js, Bun and Envoy.

The bug could let an attacker take over a system just by sending it malicious compressed data, with no login needed. That works both ways: a hacker could hijack an unpatched server, or a malicious server could hijack an unpatched user’s device.

"During this red-teaming exercise, we also found a vulnerability that allows for unauthenticated remote code execution in Brotli, a widely-deployed compression library included in many pieces of software such as Node.js, Bun, and Envoy.

The flaw could let an attacker run their own code on affected systems by sending or replying with malicious compressed data, without any need to create a user account. That is, an unpatched server that accepts compressed input could be taken over by a malicious client, and an unpatched client that accepts compressed input (such as “curl --compressed”) could be taken over by a malicious server.

This root cause issue was actually fixed in the Brotli source code in February, but it wasn’t known at the time that it gave rise to a security vulnerability and there was no more recent release of Brotli. Since Brotli is built into other software, any software which includes this library needs to take the update too, followed by the users of that software. We disclosed the vulnerability to Brotli and other downstream projects such as Node.js, which released or are currently releasing security updates, and Brotli cut new release versions and published a CVE. Source: https://x.com/OpenAI/status/2113766354386084338

More details on the patch and mitigations below:

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