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Go-Ethereum vulnerable to denial of service via malicious p2p message

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Sep 6, 2023 in ethereum/go-ethereum • Updated Nov 17, 2023

Package

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

Affected versions

< 1.12.1-stable

Patched versions

1.12.1-stable

Description

Impact

A vulnerable node, can be made to consume unbounded amounts of memory when handling specially crafted p2p messages sent from an attacker node.

Details

The p2p handler spawned a new goroutine to respond to ping requests. By flooding a node with ping requests, an unbounded number of goroutines can be created, leading to resource exhaustion and potentially crash due to OOM.

Patches

The fix is included in geth version 1.12.1-stable, i.e, 1.12.2-unstable and onwards.

Fixed by ethereum/go-ethereum#27887

Workarounds

No known workarounds.

Credits

This bug was reported by Patrick McHardy and reported via bounty@ethereum.org.

References

References

@holiman holiman published to ethereum/go-ethereum Sep 6, 2023
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Sep 6, 2023
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Sep 6, 2023
Reviewed Sep 6, 2023
Last updated Nov 17, 2023

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS score

0.112%
(46th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2023-40591

GHSA ID

GHSA-ppjg-v974-84cm

Source code

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