CVE-2020-1668

On Juniper Networks EX2300 Series, receipt of a stream of specific multicast packets by the layer2 interface can cause high CPU load, which could lead to traffic interruption. This issue occurs when multicast packets are received by the layer 2 interface. To check if the device has high CPU load due to this issue, the administrator can issue the following command: user@host> show chassis routing-engine Routing Engine status: … Idle 2 percent the Idle value shows as low (2 % in the example above), and also the following command: user@host> show system processes summary … PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU COMMAND 11639 root 52 0 283M 11296K select 12:15 44.97% eventd 11803 root 81 0 719M 239M RUN 251:12 31.98% fxpc{fxpc} the eventd and the fxpc processes might use higher WCPU percentage (respectively 44.97% and 31.98% in the above example). This issue affects Juniper Networks Junos OS on EX2300 Series: 18.1 versions prior to 18.1R3-S11; 18.2 versions prior to 18.2R3-S5; 18.3 versions prior to 18.3R2-S4, 18.3R3-S3; 18.4 versions prior to 18.4R2-S5, 18.4R3-S4; 19.1 versions prior to 19.1R3-S2; 19.2 versions prior to 19.2R1-S5, 19.2R3; 19.3 versions prior to 19.3R2-S4, 19.3R3; 19.4 versions prior to 19.4R1-S3, 19.4R2-S1, 19.4R3; 20.1 versions prior to 20.1R1-S2, 20.1R2.

Weakness

The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource, thereby enabling an actor to influence the amount of resources consumed, eventually leading to the exhaustion of available resources.

Affected Software

Extended Description

Limited resources include memory, file system storage, database connection pool entries, and CPU. If an attacker can trigger the allocation of these limited resources, but the number or size of the resources is not controlled, then the attacker could cause a denial of service that consumes all available resources. This would prevent valid users from accessing the product, and it could potentially have an impact on the surrounding environment. For example, a memory exhaustion attack against an application could slow down the application as well as its host operating system. There are at least three distinct scenarios which can commonly lead to resource exhaustion:

Resource exhaustion problems are often result due to an incorrect implementation of the following situations:

Potential Mitigations

• Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either:

• The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question.

• The second solution is simply difficult to effectively institute – and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply makes the attack require more resources on the part of the attacker.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/147.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/227.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/492.html

References

• https://kb.juniper.net/JSA11065
• https://kb.juniper.net/JSA11065