CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-21328

Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Published: Feb 26, 2021 | Modified: Mar 05, 2021
CVSS 3.x
5.3
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
CVSS 2.x
5 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Vapor is a web framework for Swift. In Vapor before version 4.40.1, there is a DoS attack against anyone who Bootstraps a metrics backend for their Vapor app. The following is the attack vector: 1. send unlimited requests against a vapor instance with different paths. this will create unlimited counters and timers, which will eventually drain the system. 2. downstream services might suffer from this attack as well by being spammed with error paths. This has been patched in 4.40.1. The DefaultResponder will rewrite any undefined route paths for to vapor_route_undefined to avoid unlimited counters.

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
Vapor Vapor_project * 4.40.1 (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