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SurrealDB vulnerable to Uncontrolled CPU Consumption via WebSocket Interface

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Jan 17, 2024 in surrealdb/surrealdb • Updated Jan 19, 2024

Package

cargo surrealdb (Rust)

Affected versions

< 1.1.0

Patched versions

1.1.0

Description

SurrealDB depends on the tungstenite and tokio-tungstenite crates used by the axum crate, which handles connections to the SurrealDB WebSocket interface. On versions before 0.20.1, the tungstenite crate presented an issue which allowed the parsing of HTTP headers during the client handshake to continuously consume high CPU when the headers were very long. All affected crates have been updated in SurrealDB version 1.1.0.

From the original advisory for CVE-2023-43669:
"The Tungstenite crate through 0.20.0 for Rust allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (minutes of CPU consumption) via an excessive length of an HTTP header in a client handshake. The length affects both how many times a parse is attempted (e.g., thousands of times) and the average amount of data for each parse attempt (e.g., millions of bytes)."

Impact

A remote unauthenticated attacker may cause a SurrealDB server that exposes its WebSocket interface to consume high CPU by sending an HTTP request with a very long header to the WebSocket interface, potentially leading to denial of service.

Patches

  • Version 1.1.0 and later are not affected by this issue.

Workarounds

Users unable to update may be able to limit access to the WebSocket interface (i.e. the /rpc endpoint) via reverse proxy if not in use or only used by a limited number of trusted clients. Alternatively, a reverse proxy may be used to strip or truncate request headers exceeding a reasonable length before reaching the SurrealDB server.

References

References

@gguillemas gguillemas published to surrealdb/surrealdb Jan 17, 2024
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Jan 19, 2024
Reviewed Jan 19, 2024
Last updated Jan 19, 2024

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Weaknesses

No CWEs

CVE ID

No known CVE

GHSA ID

GHSA-58j9-j2fj-v8f4

Source code

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