quic-go's path validation mechanism can be exploited to cause denial of service

2024-01-1015:08:40

Google

osv.dev

quic-go

path validation

denial of service

memory exhaustion

congestion window

exploit

vulnerability

software update

6.5 Medium

CVSS3

Attack Vector

NETWORK

Attack Complexity

LOW

Privileges Required

LOW

User Interaction

NONE

Scope

UNCHANGED

Confidentiality Impact

NONE

Integrity Impact

NONE

Availability Impact

HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

7 High

AI Score

Confidence

High

0.001 Low

EPSS

Percentile

41.2%

JSON

An attacker can cause its peer to run out of memory sending a large number of PATH_CHALLENGE frames. The receiver is supposed to respond to each PATH_CHALLENGE frame with a PATH_RESPONSE frame. The attacker can prevent the receiver from sending out (the vast majority of) these PATH_RESPONSE frames by collapsing the peers congestion window (by selectively acknowledging received packets) and by manipulating the peer’s RTT estimate.

I published a more detailed description of the attack and its mitigation in this blog post: https://seemann.io/posts/2023-12-18-exploiting-quics-path-validation/

There’s no way to mitigate this attack, please update quic-go to a version that contains the fix.

CPENameOperatorVersion
github.com/quic-go/quic-golt0.38.2
github.com/quic-go/quic-golt0.39.4
github.com/quic-go/quic-goge0.38.0
github.com/quic-go/quic-golt0.37.7
github.com/quic-go/quic-goge0.39.0
github.com/quic-go/quic-goeq0.40.0

Name	Operator	Version
github.com/quic-go/quic-go	lt	0.38.2
github.com/quic-go/quic-go	lt	0.39.4
github.com/quic-go/quic-go	ge	0.38.0
github.com/quic-go/quic-go	lt	0.37.7
github.com/quic-go/quic-go	ge	0.39.0
github.com/quic-go/quic-go	eq	0.40.0