Hosted yarn berry redirect makes yarn send the project's npm registry auth token to the patch host #404
Description
[agent] Found by the scheduled Yarn Berry (2+) bug-hunt routine (ledger #305).
Summary
On yarn berry, hosted mode pins a patched dependency as <name>@npm:<v>::__archiveUrl=<hosted tgz> (crates/socket-patch-core/src/patch/redirect/mod.rs:3459). Yarn handles that locator with its npm fetcher, so it attaches the npm registry's credentials to the request, even though the request goes to the hosted patch server and not to the registry. These cases all send Authorization: Bearer <npm token> to the patch host:
- any scoped package (
@scope/name) when annpmAuthTokenis configured. Yarn uses best-effort auth for scoped idents, sonpmAlwaysAuthisn't needed. That covers the top-levelnpmAuthTokenin.yarnrc.yml, theYARN_NPM_AUTH_TOKENenv var that CI commonly sets, andnpmScopes.<scope>.npmAuthToken; - every hosted package, scoped or not, when
npmAlwaysAuth: trueis set. That's the usual setup for Artifactory / Nexus / GitHub Packages proxies.
Impact
- A private-registry or npm publish token is disclosed to
patch.socket.dev(or to any--patch-server-urlhost) on every cold-cache install of a hosted-patched package. CI is affected on every run. The user never configured that host to receive the token, and nothing in the docs mentions it. - npm, pnpm and yarn classic scope registry auth to the registry's host, so this is berry-specific. It comes from the locator form that hosted mode picks.
- Scoped packages (
@babel/*,@types/*,@isaacs/*…) are a large share of the patchable npm surface.
Repro (Linux, yarn 4.12.0 / 4.18.1 / 4.0.2; mock patch API logging the Authorization header on the tarball route)
mkdir proj && cd proj
echo '{"name":"app","version":"1.0.0","private":true,"dependencies":{"@isaacs/string-locale-compare":"1.1.0","left-pad":"1.3.0"}}' > package.json
printf 'nodeLinker: node-modules\nenableGlobalCache: false\n' > .yarnrc.yml
yarn install
socket-patch scan --json --yes --api-url http://127.0.0.1:18080 --org test-org --api-token fake # hosted (default): redirected 2
# fresh checkout, cold cache:
mkdir ../fresh && cp package.json yarn.lock ../fresh/ && cd ../fresh
printf 'nodeLinker: node-modules\nenableGlobalCache: false\nunsafeHttpWhitelist:\n - "127.0.0.1"\n' > .yarnrc.yml
YARN_NPM_AUTH_TOKEN=ENV-CI-TOKEN YARN_GLOBAL_FOLDER=$(mktemp -d) yarn install --immutableWhat the patch host received:
GET /patch/npm/@isaacs/string-locale-compare/1.1.0/<token>/<uuid>/…tgz Authorization: Bearer ENV-CI-TOKEN
GET /patch/npm/left-pad/1.3.0/<token>/<uuid>/left-pad-1.3.0.tgz Authorization: (none)
With npmAuthToken: "ALWAYS-TOKEN" and npmAlwaysAuth: true in .yarnrc.yml, both requests carry Bearer ALWAYS-TOKEN. The installs themselves succeed and get the patched bytes.
Expected vs actual
- Expected: a hosted redirect shouldn't cause installs to disclose registry credentials to a host the user never set up for them. The CLI contract already holds hosted fetches to this standard elsewhere: the vlt artifact probe is specified as "no
Authorization" (CLI_CONTRACT.md,redirect_vlt_artifact_unverifiable). If the berry locator form can't avoid it, hosted mode should at least detect a configurednpmAuthToken/npmAlwaysAuth(.yarnrc.yml, env) and warn or refuse, and docs/ecosystems.md "yarn berry" plus docs/testing/yarn-berry-compatibility.md should document it. - Actual: the token is sent silently, and the run reports plain success.
Matrix
| OS | yarn | scoped + npmAuthToken / YARN_NPM_AUTH_TOKEN |
scoped + npmScopes token |
unscoped + npmAuthToken |
any + npmAlwaysAuth: true |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linux | 4.0.2 (bare-hex lock) | sent (env) | untested | — | untested |
| Linux | 4.12.0 | sent | untested | not sent | sent |
| Linux | 4.18.1 (lock version: 10) |
sent (rc and env) | sent | not sent | sent |
| macOS / Windows | — | untested. The behaviour is in yarn's JS fetcher (npmHttpUtils.get takes auth from the configured registry, not from the URL origin), so it shouldn't depend on the OS |
Yarn 2/3 aren't reachable: hosted mode refuses cacheKey 7/8.
First bad: main 2463257. Release 4.0.0 writes the same ::__archiveUrl= locator for berry, so it should behave the same; I didn't re-run the token capture against it.
Suspect code
crates/socket-patch-core/src/patch/redirect/mod.rs:3459: the{fname}@npm:{}::__archiveUrl={}resolution written byrewrite_yarn_berry(line 3238). There's no gate on registry auth config next to the other berry project gates inpreflight_yarn_berry_hosted(around line 3195).
Activity
mikolalysenko commentedon Oct 1, 2026
[agent] Triaged:
priority:p1(yarn berry). This is a security issue: registry credentials go to a third-party host. Not a duplicate. #399 (Composertransport-optionsauth sent to the hosted URL) is the same class of bug, but it's in a different rewriter with a different mechanism, so I'm not clustering them. The berry locator is still written atcrates/socket-patch-core/src/patch/redirect/mod.rs:3459on main2463257, and I found no gate onnpmAuthToken/npmAlwaysAuth.Generated by Claude Code
mikolalysenko commentedon Oct 1, 2026
[agent] Claiming this issue (shared root cause: the yarn berry hosted redirect pins through an
npm:locator, so yarn's npm fetcher attaches registry credentials to the patch-host request). Branch: agent/fix-yarn-berry-hosted-auth-leak. Claim-ID: 2026-10-01T12:21:53Z-b1686fGenerated by Claude Code
mikolalysenko commentedon Oct 1, 2026
[agent] Draft PR: #465
Generated by Claude Code
Stop yarn berry pins leaking npm auth tokens
Stop yarn berry pins leaking npm auth tokens
mikolalysenko commentedon Oct 1, 2026
[agent] The fix in #465 is blocked on a maintainer decision. The tarball-URL pin stops the token leak, but yarn's hardened mode (automatic on public-PR CI) rejects it with YN0078. A
package.jsonresolutions-based pin works in every mode, but it would change hosted mode to edit package.json. Measurements and options: #465 (comment)Generated by Claude Code
Merge origin/main into agent/fix-yarn-berry-catalog-resolutions