CVE-2024-52532: Addressing Infinite Loop and Memory Consumption in GNOME libsoup before 3.6.1

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Identifier "CVE-2024-52532" has been assigned to a significant issue found in the GNOME libraries before version 3.6.1. This vulnerability is related to an infinite loop and memory consumption when parsing certain patterns of WebSocket data from clients. In this post, we will discuss the details of this vulnerability, provide some code snippets to demonstrate the issue, and suggest ways to fix or mitigate the problem.

Vulnerability Details

The GNOME libsoup library is a widely used HTTP client/server library for GNOME. It is written in C and provides asockets-based API for both client and server-side HTTP communications. Before version 3.6.1, libsoup contained an infinite loop vulnerability and memory consumption issue when reading certain patterns of WebSocket data from clients.

The vulnerability was discovered during a security audit and it has been reported that the library hangs indefinitely when receiving specific WebSocket payloads, causing high memory consumption and eventually crashing the application. Applications using the affected version of libsoup might be vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, making this a serious issue.

The following code snippet demonstrates the vulnerable part of the libsoup library

/* in the libsoup/soup-websocket.c file */
static void
read_frame_header (SoupWebsocketConnection *self)
{
    // ...

    while (1) {
        n = g_input_stream_read (base_stream, buf, 1, cancellable, error);
        if (n < )
            return;

        if (n ==  && !*error) {
            *error = g_error_new_literal (SOUP_WEBSOCKET_ERROR, SOUP_WEBSOCKET_ERROR_EOF,
                                           _("Connection terminated"));
            return;
        }

        len = soup_buffer_get_byte (buf);
        if (s_mask)
            *s_mask = soup_buffer_get_byte (buf);
        if (len)
            break;  /* <= This is the issue. There's no exit from the loop in some cases. */
    }

    // ...
}

As seen in the code snippet above, the infinite loop occurs when the read_frame_header() function keeps reading from the base_stream but never breaks out of the loop due to the absence of an exit condition.

Impact

The impact of this vulnerability is significant, especially for applications dependent on the GNOME libsoup library. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability by sending malicious WebSocket payloads, causing high memory consumption and ultimately crashing the application. The affected applications are susceptible to DoS attacks, and this could lead to potential data loss, downtime, and disruption of services.

References

For more information about the CVE-2024-52532 vulnerability, please refer to the following original references:

1. MITRE CVE Database: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2024-52532
2. NVD - National Vulnerability Database: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-52532
3. GNOME libsoup Project Repository: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libsoup

Mitigation Steps and Fixes

To fix this vulnerability, it is recommended to upgrade the GNOME libsoup library to version 3.6.1 or later. The development team has addressed the issue in the release, resolving both the infinite loop and memory consumption issues.

Upgrade the libsoup library to the latest version: sudo apt-get install libsoup2.4-dev

Alternatively, you can also manually patch the vulnerable code in the read_frame_header() function, adding an appropriate exit condition to the infinite loop. However, it is always safer and recommended to update the library version as patches from the development team often include additional security fixes and improvements.

Timeline

Published on: 11/11/2024 20:15:20 UTC
Last modified on: 11/12/2024 19:35:16 UTC