Hamba avro is a go lang encoder/decoder implementation of the avro codec specification. In affected versions a well-crafted string passed to avros github.com/hamba/avro/v2.Unmarshal() can throw a fatal error: runtime: out of memory which is unrecoverable and can cause denial of service of the consumer of avro. The root cause of the issue is that avro uses part of the input to Unmarshal() to determine the size when creating a new slice and hence an attacker may consume arbitrary amounts of memory which in turn may cause the application to crash. This issue has been addressed in commit b4a402f4 which has been included in release version 2.13.0. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Avro | Avro_project | * | 2.13.0 (excluding) |
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.