SSL Validation Defaults to False

Overview

Affected versions of electron-packager configure the generated application to disable SSL certificate verification by default.

This could allow an attacker with a privileged network position to launch a Man In The Middle (MITM) attack on the install process, intercepting the step where electron-packager downloads Electron for supported target platforms and architectures, and replacing the valid download with a tampered malicious one.

This only affects users using the electron-packager CLI. The strict-ssl option defaults to true for the node.js API.

Recommendation

1. Update to version 7.0.0 or later.
2. Delete the electron-download cache folder, which is by default located at ~/.electron.

References

• Issue #333
• GitHub Advisory