GHSA-qvqg-6rp8-4p9h github.com/ipfs/kubo affected by DOS Bitswap unbounded persistent memory leak
An attacker can cause a denial of service in IPFS Kubo nodes by sending excessive Bitswap requests that exhaust memory.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is GHSA-qvqg-6rp8-4p9h?
GHSA-qvqg-6rp8-4p9h is a denial of service vulnerability in github.com/ipfs/kubo, published on 11 May 2023. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Impact
An attacker is able allocate arbitrarily many bytes in the Bitswap server by sending many WANT_BLOCK and or WANT_HAVE requests which are queued in an unbounded queue, with allocations that persist even if the connection is closed.
This affects users accepting or connecting untrusted connections such as by running in the public swarm and no pnet config. Nodes that are not publicly reachable but connects to untrusted nodes are also vulnerable to the untrusted nodes being connected to since libp2p connections are blindly bidirectional.
Patches
- 19feb15833c6f4d6e7f1e1b132efaae96d76481d
boxoupdate in Kubo - GHSA-m974-xj4j-7qv5 patches in boxo
Workarounds
Use PNET, swarm filters or resource manager allows list to block untrusted connections.
Note that using the resource manager will disrupt both client and server features because the bitswap protocol is a message based protocol mixing requests and responses.
References
- GHSA-m974-xj4j-7qv5
- CVE-2023-25568
Which versions are affected by GHSA-qvqg-6rp8-4p9h?
2 open source packages ship an affected version, including github.com/ipfs/kubo.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
github.com/ipfs/kubo Go | All versions | 0.19.0 |
github.com/ipfs/kubo Go | All versions | 0.19.0 |
How do I fix GHSA-qvqg-6rp8-4p9h?
Upgrade github.com/ipfs/kubo to 0.19.0 or later.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is GHSA-qvqg-6rp8-4p9h being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of GHSA-qvqg-6rp8-4p9h in the wild and no public exploit code.