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Unbounded memory usage on exposed HTTP/2 (non-gRPC) endpoints

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Jan 7, 2022 in spiffe/spire • Updated Jan 11, 2023

Package

gomod github.com/spiffe/spire (Go)

Affected versions

< 1.0.3
>= 1.1.0, < 1.1.3

Patched versions

1.0.3
1.1.3

Description

Impact

The net/http Go package has a reported vulnerability tracked under CVE-2021-44716 which allows attacker controlled HTTP/2 requests to trigger unbounded memory usage in HTTP/2 endpoints. gRPC endpoints are not vulnerable as they rely on their own HTTP/2 implementation instead of the net/http package. HTTP/2 endpoints consuming the net/http package within SPIRE server and agent (or other components in this repository) that are on by default include the following:

  • OIDC Discovery Provider
  • K8s Workload Registrar in webhook mode

The following endpoints are vulnerable when enabled:

  • SPIRE server bundle endpoint (i.e. Federation API)

The following endpoints are NOT vulnerable, since HTTP/2 support in go is not enabled on non-TLS protected endpoints:

  • SPIRE server/agent metrics endpoint when configured for Prometheus
  • SPIRE server/agent health endpoints
  • SPIRE server/agent profiling endpoints

Patches

SPIRE 1.0.3 and 1.1.3 have been released with an upgraded Go toolchain which patches the vulnerability

Workarounds

The vulnerability can be worked around entirely by including the http2server=0 value in the GODEBUG environment variable (see golang/go#50058). This turns off HTTP/2 support on all non-gRPC endpoints. They will still function with HTTP/1.1.

The risk associated with this vulnerability can be somewhat mitigated by limiting the exposure of the endpoints in question. If necessary, vulnerable components or endpoints that are optionally configured can be disabled temporarily.

References

References

@azdagron azdagron published to spiffe/spire Jan 7, 2022
Reviewed Jan 10, 2022
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Jan 12, 2022
Last updated Jan 11, 2023

Severity

High

Weaknesses

No CWEs

CVE ID

No known CVE

GHSA ID

GHSA-m7vp-hqwv-7m5x

Source code

No known source code
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