CVE-2022-22191

A Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerability in the processing of a flood of specific ARP traffic in Juniper Networks Junos OS on the EX4300 switch, sent from the local broadcast domain, may allow an unauthenticated network-adjacent attacker to trigger a PFEMAN watchdog timeout, causing the Packet Forwarding Engine (PFE) to crash and restart. After the restart, transit traffic will be temporarily interrupted until the PFE is reprogrammed. In a virtual chassis (VC), the impacted Flexible PIC Concentrator (FPC) may split from the VC temporarily, and join back into the VC once the PFE restarts. Continued receipt and processing of these packets will create a sustained Denial of Service (DoS) condition. This issue affects Juniper Networks Junos OS on the EX4300: All versions prior to 15.1R7-S12; 18.4 versions prior to 18.4R2-S10, 18.4R3-S11; 19.1 versions prior to 19.1R3-S8; 19.2 versions prior to 19.2R1-S9, 19.2R3-S4; 19.3 versions prior to 19.3R3-S5; 19.4 versions prior to 19.4R2-S6, 19.4R3-S7; 20.1 versions prior to 20.1R3-S3; 20.2 versions prior to 20.2R3-S3; 20.3 versions prior to 20.3R3-S2; 20.4 versions prior to 20.4R3-S1; 21.1 versions prior to 21.1R3; 21.2 versions prior to 21.2R2-S1, 21.2R3; 21.3 versions prior to 21.3R1-S2, 21.3R2.

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/JSA69502