CVE-2021-41270: CSV Injection in Symfony

Description -----------

CSV Injection, also known as Formula Injection, occurs when websites embed untrusted input inside CSV files. When a spreadsheet program opens a CSV, any cell starting with = is interpreted by the software as a formula and could be abused by an attacker.

In Symfony 4.1, we've added the opt-in csvescapeformulas option in CsvEncoder, to prefix all cells starting by =, +, - or @ by a tab \t.

Since then, OWASP added 2 chars in that list: - Tab (0x09) - Carriage return (0x0D)

This makes our previous prefix char (Tab \t) part of the vulnerable characters, and OWASP suggests using the single quote ' for prefixing the value.

Resolution ----------

Symfony now follows the OWASP recommendations and use the single quote ' to prefix formulas and adds the prefix to cells starting by \t, \r as well as =, +, - and @.

The patch for this issue is available here for branch 4.4.

Credits -------

We would like to thank Jake Barwell for reporting the issue and Jérémy Derussé for fixing the issue.

— GitHub

Symfony/Serializer handles serializing and deserializing data structures for Symfony, a PHP framework for web and console applications and a set of reusable PHP components. Symfony versions 4.1.0 before 4.4.35 and versions 5.0.0 before 5.3.12 are vulnerable to CSV injection, also known as formula injection. In Symfony 4.1, maintainers added the opt-in csvescapeformulas option in the CsvEncoder, to prefix all cells starting with =, +, - or @ with a tab \t. Since then, OWASP added 2 chars in that list: Tab (0x09) and Carriage return (0x0D). This makes the previous prefix char (Tab \t) part of the vulnerable characters, and OWASP suggests using the single quote ' for prefixing the value. Starting with versions 4.4.34 and 5.3.12, Symfony now follows the OWASP recommendations and uses the single quote ' to prefix formulas and add the prefix to cells starting by \t, \r as well as =, +, - and @.

— MITRE