CVE-2024-40634

Argo CD is a declarative, GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes. This report details a security vulnerability in Argo CD, where an unauthenticated attacker can send a specially crafted large JSON payload to the /api/webhook endpoint, causing excessive memory allocation that leads to service disruption by triggering an Out Of Memory (OOM) kill. The issue poses a high risk to the availability of Argo CD deployments. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.11.6, 2.10.15, and 2.9.20.

Weakness

The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.

Affected Software

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://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/commit/46c0c0b64deaab1ece70cb701030b76668ad0cdc
• https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/commit/540e3a57b90eb3655db54793332fac86bcc38b36
• https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/commit/d881ee78949e23160a0b280bb159e4d3d625a4df
• https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/security/advisories/GHSA-jmvp-698c-4x3w
• https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/commit/46c0c0b64deaab1ece70cb701030b76668ad0cdc
• https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/commit/540e3a57b90eb3655db54793332fac86bcc38b36
• https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/commit/d881ee78949e23160a0b280bb159e4d3d625a4df
• https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/security/advisories/GHSA-jmvp-698c-4x3w