CVE-2024-53984

Nanopb is a small code-size Protocol Buffers implementation. When the compile time option PB_ENABLE_MALLOC is enabled, the message contains at least one field with FT_POINTER field type, custom stream callback is used with unknown stream length. and the pb_decode_ex() function is used with flag PB_DECODE_DELIMITED, then the pb_decode_ex() function does not automatically call pb_release(), like is done for other failure cases. This could lead to memory leak and potential denial-of-service. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.4.9.1.

Weakness

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, which slowly consumes remaining memory.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Choose a language or tool that provides automatic memory management, or makes manual memory management less error-prone.
• For example, glibc in Linux provides protection against free of invalid pointers.
• When using Xcode to target OS X or iOS, enable automatic reference counting (ARC) [REF-391].
• To help correctly and consistently manage memory when programming in C++, consider using a smart pointer class such as std::auto_ptr (defined by ISO/IEC ISO/IEC 14882:2003), std::shared_ptr and std::unique_ptr (specified by an upcoming revision of the C++ standard, informally referred to as C++ 1x), or equivalent solutions such as Boost.

References

• https://github.com/nanopb/nanopb/commit/2b86c255aa52250438d5aba124d0e86db495b378
• https://github.com/nanopb/nanopb/security/advisories/GHSA-xwqq-qxmw-hj5r