GHSA-4642-5mcj-2rqw: Forge: ASN.1 OID first arc truncation in asn1.oidToDer

Summary

asn1.oidToDer() did not range-check the first two arcs of an OID string, so an OID such as 0.42.840.113549.1.1.1 or 4294977127.18.840.113549.1.1.1 was encoded as the DER of a different OID (here rsaEncryption, 1.2.840.113549.1.1.1). This is an incomplete fix of CVE-2025-66030. Fixed in node-forge 1.4.1.

Details

X.690 section 8.19 encodes the first two arcs of an OID as one subidentifier, 40 arc1 + arc2, where the first arc is 0, 1 or 2 and the second arc is at most 39 when the first is 0 or 1. asn1.oidToDer() in lib/asn1.js computed that value with no range check and wrote it with putByte(), which keeps only the low 16 bits. Out-of-range first arcs therefore produced the encoding of a different OID: 0.42.840.113549.1.1.1 gives 40 0 + 42 = 42 and 4294977127.18.840.113549.1.1.1 wraps to 42, both the first byte of rsaEncryption. The fix for CVE-2025-66030 (GHSA-65ch-62r8-g69g, node-forge 1.3.2) added a 32-bit check for the later arcs only.

A related encoding bug made valid OIDs with a first subidentifier above 127 (2.48 and higher, e.g. 2.999) encode and decode incorrectly, because the first subidentifier was always written and read as a single byte.

The fix rejects out-of-range first arcs and encodes and decodes the first subidentifier in base 128 like the others (the latter from public PR #1148).

Patches Fixed in node-forge 1.4.1. asn1.oidToDer() throws for OIDs with out-of-range first arcs, and the first subidentifier is encoded and decoded correctly.

Workarounds Validate OID strings from untrusted input before passing them to node-forge: the first arc must be 0, 1 or 2, and the second arc at most 39 when the first arc is 0 or 1.

Credits Reported by wzc. The first subidentifier encoding fix is from PR #1148 by @spokodev.

Proof of concept

var forge = require('node-forge'); var der = forge.asn1.oidToDer('0.42.840.113549.1.1.1'); console.log(der.toHex()); // 2a864886f70d010101 console.log(forge.asn1.derToOid(der)); // 1.2.840.113549.1.1.1

On 1.4.0 the out-of-range OID string encodes to exactly the DER of rsaEncryption (the same happens with 4294977127.18.840.113549.1.1.1). On 1.4.1 oidToDer() throws "Invalid OID; the first two arcs are out of range.".

Regression tests are in tests/unit/asn1.js ("should reject OIDs with out of range first arcs").

Impact

Applications that accept OID strings from untrusted input, check or authorize them as strings, and then encode them with node-forge (for example when building certificates, CSRs or other ASN.1 structures from user-supplied extension or attribute OIDs) can be made to emit a different, trusted OID than the one that was checked. Parsing DER is not affected. There is no confidentiality or availability impact.