pyasn1 is a generic ASN.1 library for Python. Prior to 0.6.5, constructed string and indefinite-length ANY decoding repeatedly concatenates each fragment onto a growing bytes value. Attacker-controlled BER or CER data can use many constructed OCTET STRING or character-string fragments. DER rejects constructed OCTET STRING without a schema, but accepts its definite-length form when asn1Spec selects univ.OctetString; it also accepts constructed character strings such as UTF8String without a schema, even though those encodings are not valid DER. The separate indefinite-length ANY path is reachable in BER and CER when asn1Spec selects univ.Any; DER rejects indefinite lengths. OctetStringPayloadDecoder uses growing header concatenation and AnyPayloadDecoder.indefLenValueDecoder uses growing chunk concatenation, repeatedly copying an increasing prefix and causing quadratic work. A sufficiently fragmented value can occupy decoding workers and cause CPU exhaustion without confidentiality or integrity impact. This issue is fixed in version 0.6.5.
Weakness
An algorithm in a product has an inefficient worst-case computational complexity that may be detrimental to system performance and can be triggered by an attacker, typically using crafted manipulations that ensure that the worst case is being reached.
References
- https://github.com/pyasn1/pyasn1/commit/4ce00797c594b59c1fd6b86d9ebc3ba87b7ec9f9
- https://github.com/pyasn1/pyasn1/pull/132
- https://github.com/pyasn1/pyasn1/releases/tag/v0.6.5
- https://github.com/pyasn1/pyasn1/security/advisories/GHSA-9m75-vc3g-4x39
- https://github.com/pyasn1/pyasn1/security/advisories/GHSA-9m75-vc3g-4x39