Fides is an open-source privacy engineering platform for managing data privacy requests and privacy regulations. The Fides webserver is vulnerable to a type of Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Attackers can exploit a weakness in the connector template upload feature to upload a malicious zip bomb file, resulting in resource exhaustion and service unavailability for all users of the Fides webserver. This vulnerability affects Fides versions 2.11.0 through 2.15.1. Exploitation is limited to users with elevated privileges with the CONNECTOR_TEMPLATE_REGISTER scope, which includes root users and users with the owner role. The vulnerability has been patched in Fides version 2.16.0. Users are advised to upgrade to this version or later to secure their systems against this threat. There is no known workaround to remediate this vulnerability without upgrading. If an attack occurs, the impact can be mitigated by manually or automatically restarting the affected container.
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.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fides | Ethyca | 2.11.0 (including) | 2.16.0 (excluding) |
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:
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.