RIOT through 2019.07 contains a memory leak in the TCP implementation (gnrc_tcp), allowing an attacker to consume all memory available for network packets and thus effectively stopping all network threads from working. This is related to _receive in sys/net/gnrc/transport_layer/tcp/gnrc_tcp_eventloop.c upon receiving an ACK before a SYN.
Weakness
The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.
Affected Software
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Riot | Riot-os | * | 2019.07 (including) |
Potential Mitigations
- Choose a language or tool that provides automatic memory management, or makes manual memory management less error-prone.
- For example, glibc in Linux provides protection against free of invalid pointers.
- When using Xcode to target OS X or iOS, enable automatic reference counting (ARC) [REF-391].
- To help correctly and consistently manage memory when programming in C++, consider using a smart pointer class such as std::auto_ptr (defined by ISO/IEC ISO/IEC 14882:2003), std::shared_ptr and std::unique_ptr (specified by an upcoming revision of the C++ standard, informally referred to as C++ 1x), or equivalent solutions such as Boost.