CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-41168

Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity

Published: Oct 21, 2021 | Modified: Jul 17, 2023
CVSS 3.x
6.5
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS 2.x
4 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Snudown is a reddit-specific fork of the Sundown Markdown parser used by GitHub, with Python integration added. In affected versions snudown was found to be vulnerable to denial of service attacks to its reference table implementation. References written in markdown [reference_name]: https://www.example.com are inserted into a hash table which was found to have a weak hash function, meaning that an attacker can reliably generate a large number of collisions for it. This makes the hash table vulnerable to a hash-collision DoS attack, a type of algorithmic complexity attack. Further the hash table allowed for duplicate entries resulting in long retrieval times. Proofs of concept and further discussion of the hash collision issue are discussed on the snudown GHSA(https://github.com/reddit/snudown/security/advisories/GHSA-6gvv-9q92-w5f6). Users are advised to update to version 1.7.0.

Weakness

An algorithm in a product has an inefficient worst-case computational complexity that may be detrimental to system performance and can be triggered by an attacker, typically using crafted manipulations that ensure that the worst case is being reached.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Snudown Reddit * 1.7.0 (excluding)

References