CVE-2023-40583: libp2p go-libp2p Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2023-40583 is a high (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in libp2p go-libp2p. EPSS estimates a 0.95% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 60.7% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 25-08-2023
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 02-10-2024
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

libp2p is a networking stack and library modularized out of The IPFS Project, and bundled separately for other tools to use. In go-libp2p, by using signed peer records a malicious actor can store an arbitrary amount of data in a remote node’s memory. This memory does not get garbage collected and so the victim can run out of memory and crash. If users of go-libp2p in production are not monitoring memory consumption over time, it could be a silent attack i.e. the attacker could bring down nodes over a period of time (how long depends on the node resources i.e. a go-libp2p node on a virtual server with 4 gb of memory takes about 90 sec to bring down; on a larger server, it might take a bit longer.) This issue was patched in version 0.27.4.

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