The CVE-2025-1386 vulnerability is a newly discovered critical issue that affects the ch-go library, which is widely used in internet applications for its efficient and secure connections. This vulnerability, if exploited, can pose a significant threat to the integrity and security of the impacted systems. In this long-read post, we will delve into the technical details of this vulnerability, explaining how it technically works, what the necessary conditions for exploitation are, and finally how to mitigate this threat.

Background

The ch-go library is a popular package used across numerous applications for establishing secure and efficient TCP connections. It is designed to handle rich data structures in a simple, yet effective way, ensuring high performance and low overhead. However, under specific conditions when a large, uncompressed malicious external data is included in the query packet, it is possible for an attacker in control of such data to smuggle another query packet into the connection stream. This, in turn, can have serious consequences for the targeted system, including unauthorized access and data leaks.

Technical Details

The primary condition for this vulnerability to be exploited is that the attacker must have control over a large, uncompressed malicious external data. The ch-go library includes the functionality to attach external data to query packets, which are then transmitted across the network. However, when this external data is not compressed, it can be embedded with smuggled query packets that can later be executed by the attacker. This way, the attacker can essentially smuggle another query packet into the connection stream, bypassing security mechanisms and potentially gaining unauthorized access to the system.

The attacker crafts a large uncompressed external data containing a malicious query packet.

2. The attacker embeds this data into a legitimate query packet, using the ch-go library's built-in support for including external data.

The targeted system receives the query packet for processing.

4. Due to the size and lack of compression of the external data, the malicious query packet may remain unprocessed and undetected during the initial processing of the legitimate query packet.
5. The malicious query packet, now waiting in the connection stream, is then executed, potentially leading to the security breach.

Below is a code snippet demonstrating the exploitation of this vulnerability

import (
  "github.com/vulnerable/ch-go"
  "fmt"
)

func main() {
  // Craft malicious external data with a smuggled query payload
  maliciousData := craftMaliciousData()

  // Include the malicious data into the query packet using ch-go library
  queryPacket := ch_go.CreateQueryPacketWithExternalData("SELECT * FROM users", maliciousData)

  // Send the query packet (containing the malicious external data) to the targeted ch-go instance
  ch_go_instance.HandleQueryPacket(queryPacket)

  // The malicious query packet smuggled in the external data gets executed on the target system
}

Original References

1. ch-go library GitHub repository
2. Official CVE-2025-1386 entry

Mitigation and Recommendations

To counter this threat, users of the ch-go library are advised to update their library to the latest version, which includes a patch addressing this vulnerability. Additionally, users should consistently audit the security of their codebases to identify and eliminate potential vulnerabilities.

In conclusion, the CVE-2025-1386 vulnerability poses a significant threat, primarily to systems and applications relying on the ch-go library for their TCP connections. By ensuring that uncompressed malicious external data cannot be used to smuggle additional query packets into the connection stream, the security impact of this vulnerability can be reduced.

Timeline

Published on: 04/11/2025 05:15:29 UTC
Last modified on: 04/11/2025 16:15:19 UTC