Yamux is a stream multiplexer over reliable, ordered connections such as TCP/IP. The Rust implementation of the Yamux stream multiplexer uses a vector for pending frames. This vector is not bounded in length. Every time the Yamux protocol requires sending of a new frame, this frame gets appended to this vector. This can be remotely triggered in a number of ways, for example by: 1. Opening a new libp2p Identify stream. This causes the node to send its Identify message. Of course, every other protocol that causes the sending of data also works. The larger the response, the more data is enqueued. 2. Sending a Yamux Ping frame. This causes a Pong frame to be enqueued. Under normal circumstances, this queue of pending frames would be drained once they’re sent out over the network. However, the attacker can use TCP’s receive window mechanism to prevent the victim from sending out any data: By not reading from the TCP connection, the receive window will never be increased, and the victim won’t be able to send out any new data (this is how TCP implements backpressure). Once this happens, Yamux’s queue of pending frames will start growing indefinitely. The queue will only be drained once the underlying TCP connection is closed. An attacker can cause a remote node to run out of memory, which will result in the corresponding process getting terminated by the operating system.
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.
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.