CVE-2021-21369: hyperledger besu Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2021-21369 is a medium (CVSS 6.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in hyperledger besu. EPSS estimates a 1.67% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 76.4% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 09-03-2021
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 03-08-2024
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

Hyperledger Besu is an open-source, MainNet compatible, Ethereum client written in Java. In Besu before version 1.5.1 there is a denial-of-service vulnerability involving the HTTP JSON-RPC API service. If username and password authentication is enabled for the HTTP JSON-RPC API service, then prior to making any requests to an API endpoint the requestor must use the login endpoint to obtain a JSON web token (JWT) using their credentials. A single user can readily overload the login endpoint with invalid requests (incorrect password). As the supplied password is checked for validity on the main vertx event loop and takes a relatively long time this can cause the processing of other valid requests to fail. A valid username is required for this vulnerability to be exposed. This has been fixed in version 1.5.1.

• CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource ConsumptionThe product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.