CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-8299

Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Published: Jun 16, 2021 | Modified: Jun 24, 2021
CVSS 3.x
6.5
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS 2.x
3.3 LOW
AV:A/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Citrix ADC and Citrix/NetScaler Gateway 13.0 before 13.0-76.29, 12.1-61.18, 11.1-65.20, Citrix ADC 12.1-FIPS before 12.1-55.238, and Citrix SD-WAN WANOP Edition before 11.4.0, 11.3.2, 11.3.1a, 11.2.3a, 11.1.2c, 10.2.9a suffers from uncontrolled resource consumption by way of a network-based denial-of-service from within the same Layer 2 network segment. Note that the attacker must be in the same Layer 2 network segment as the vulnerable appliance.

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

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Gateway Citrix 12.1 (including) 12.1-61.18 (excluding)
Gateway Citrix 13.0 (including) 13.0-76.29 (excluding)
Netscaler_gateway Citrix 11.1 (including) 11.1-65.20 (excluding)

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.

References