Improper Handling of `callbackUrl` parameter in next-auth

Impact

An attacker can send a request to an app using NextAuth.js with an invalid callbackUrl query parameter, which internally we convert to a URL object. The URL instantiation would fail due to a malformed URL being passed into the constructor, causing it to throw an unhandled error which led to our API route handler timing out and logging in to fail. This has been remedied in the following releases:

next-auth v3 users before version 3.29.5 are impacted. (We recommend upgrading to v4, as v3 is considered unmaintained. See our migration guide)

next-auth v4 users before version 4.5.0 are impacted.

Patches

We've released patches for this vulnerability in:

• v3 - 3.29.5
• v4 - 4.5.0

You can do:

npm i next-auth@latest

or

yarn add next-auth@latest

or

pnpm add next-auth@latest

(This will update to the latest v4 version, but you can change latest to 3 if you want to stay on v3. This is not recommended.)

Workarounds

If for some reason you cannot upgrade, the workaround requires you to rely on Advanced Initialization. Here is an example:

Before:

// pages/api/auth/[...nextauth].js
import NextAuth from "next-auth"

export default NextAuth(/* your config */)

After:

// pages/api/auth/[...nextauth].js
import NextAuth from "next-auth"

function isValidHttpUrl(url) {
  try {
    return /^https?:/.test(url).protocol
  } catch {
    return false;
  }
}

export default async function handler(req, res) {
  if (
    req.query.callbackUrl &&
    !isValidHttpUrl(req.query.callbackUrl)
  ) {
   return res.status(500).send('');
  }
  
  return await NextAuth(req, res, /* your config */)
}

References

This vulnerability was discovered not long after https://github.com/nextauthjs/next-auth/security/advisories/GHSA-q2mx-j4x2-2h74 was published and is very similar in nature.

Related documentation:

• https://next-auth.js.org/getting-started/client#specifying-a-callbackurl
• https://next-auth.js.org/configuration/callbacks#redirect-callback

A test case has been added so this kind of issue will be checked before publishing. See: https://github.com/nextauthjs/next-auth/commit/e498483b23273d1bfc81be68339607f88d411bd6

For more information

If you have any concerns, we request responsible disclosure, outlined here: https://next-auth.js.org/security#reporting-a-vulnerability

Timeline

The issue was reported 2022 June 10th, a response was sent out to the reporter in less than 2 hours, and a patch was published within 3 hours.