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quic-go's path validation mechanism can be exploited to cause denial of service

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Jan 10, 2024 in quic-go/quic-go • Updated Feb 21, 2024

Package

gomod github.com/quic-go/quic-go (Go)

Affected versions

= 0.40.0
>= 0.39.0, < 0.39.4
>= 0.38.0, < 0.38.2
< 0.37.7

Patched versions

0.40.1
0.39.4
0.38.2
0.37.7

Description

An attacker can cause its peer to run out of memory sending a large number of PATH_CHALLENGE frames. The receiver is supposed to respond to each PATH_CHALLENGE frame with a PATH_RESPONSE frame. The attacker can prevent the receiver from sending out (the vast majority of) these PATH_RESPONSE frames by collapsing the peers congestion window (by selectively acknowledging received packets) and by manipulating the peer's RTT estimate.

I published a more detailed description of the attack and its mitigation in this blog post: https://seemann.io/posts/2023-12-18-exploiting-quics-path-validation/

There's no way to mitigate this attack, please update quic-go to a version that contains the fix.

References

@marten-seemann marten-seemann published to quic-go/quic-go Jan 10, 2024
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Jan 10, 2024
Reviewed Jan 10, 2024
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Jan 10, 2024
Last updated Feb 21, 2024

Severity

Moderate
6.4
/ 10

CVSS base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
High
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
Low
Availability
High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:H

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2023-49295

GHSA ID

GHSA-ppxx-5m9h-6vxf

Source code

Credits

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