Memory Leak in Go RSA (golang-fips/openssl) Leads to Resource Exhaustion
CVE-2024-1394 Published on March 21, 2024
Golang-fips/openssl: memory leaks in code encrypting and decrypting rsa payloads
A memory leak flaw was found in Golang in the RSA encrypting/decrypting code, which might lead to a resource exhaustion vulnerability using attacker-controlled inputs. The memory leak happens in github.com/golang-fips/openssl/openssl/rsa.go#L113. The objects leaked are pkey and ctx. That function uses named return parameters to free pkey and ctx if there is an error initializing the context or setting the different properties. All return statements related to error cases follow the "return nil, nil, fail(...)" pattern, meaning that pkey and ctx will be nil inside the deferred function that should free them.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2024-1394 is exploitable with network access, and does not require authorization privileges or user interaction. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have no impact on confidentiality and integrity, and a high impact on availability.
Timeline
Reported to Red Hat.
Made public. 43 days later.
Weakness Type
What is a Memory Leak Vulnerability?
The software does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, which slowly consumes remaining memory. This is often triggered by improper handling of malformed data or unexpectedly interrupted sessions. In some languages, developers are responsible for tracking memory allocation and releasing the memory. If there are no more pointers or references to the memory, then it can no longer be tracked and identified for release.
CVE-2024-1394 has been classified to as a Memory Leak vulnerability or weakness.
Products Associated with CVE-2024-1394
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