CVSS3
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
NONE
Integrity Impact
NONE
Availability Impact
HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS
Percentile
39.2%
An attacker can max out the number of client connections allowed by the ledger that was deployed using guidance provided in the indy-node repository, leaving the ledger unable to be used for its intended purpose.
The ledger content will not be impacted by the attack, and the ledger will resume servicing valid client requests after the attack.
This attack exploits the trade-off between resilience and availability. Any protection against abusive client connections will also prevent the network being accessed by certain legitimate users. As a result, validator nodes must tune their firewall rules to ensure the right trade-off for their network’s expected users. The guidance previously provided enabled a low-cost DDoS attack.
The guidance to network operators for the use of firewall rules in the deployment of Indy networks has been modified to better protect against denial of service attacks by increasing the cost and complexity in mounting such attacks.
The mitigation for this vulnerability is not in the Hyperledger Indy code per se, but rather in the individual deployments of Indy. The mitigations should be applied to all deployments of Indy, and are not related to a particular release.
Thank you to Mirko Mollik at TrustCerts.de for finding and responsibly disclosing this issue.
github.com/hyperledger/indy-node
github.com/hyperledger/indy-node/commit/53a2a1bf1a26cb8ba710fd6adc8bcf275186a4b3
github.com/hyperledger/indy-node/commits/v1.13.2-rc2
github.com/hyperledger/indy-node/security/advisories/GHSA-x996-7qh9-7ff7
github.com/pypa/advisory-database/tree/main/vulns/indy-node/PYSEC-2022-270.yaml
nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-31006