GHSA-496j-2rq6-j6cc CVE-2023-33953 PYSEC-2026-1424
Excessive Iteration in gRPC
High
PyPIRubyGems
- Severity
- 7.5 / 10
- High · CVSS 3.1
- Exploit chance (EPSS)
- 0.48%
- Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 41.37% of scored vulnerabilities.
- Known exploited
- No
- Not in CISA's catalog
- Weakness
- CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
- CWE-789 Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value
- Fix
- Available
- 2 packages have a fixed version
Description
gRPC contains a vulnerability that allows hpack table accounting errors could lead to unwanted disconnects between clients and servers in exceptional cases/ Three vectors were found that allow the following DOS attacks:
- Unbounded memory buffering in the HPACK parser
- Unbounded CPU consumption in the HPACK parser
The unbounded CPU consumption is down to a copy that occurred per-input-block in the parser, and because that could be unbounded due to the memory copy bug we end up with an O(n^2) parsing loop, with n selected by the client.
The unbounded memory buffering bugs:
- The header size limit check was behind the string reading code, so we needed to first buffer up to a 4 gigabyte string before rejecting it as longer than 8 or 16kb.
- HPACK varints have an encoding quirk whereby an infinite number of 0’s can be added at the start of an integer. gRPC’s hpack parser needed to read all of them before concluding a parse.
- gRPC’s metadata overflow check was performed per frame, so that the following sequence of frames could cause infinite buffering: HEADERS: containing a: 1 CONTINUATION: containing a: 2 CONTINUATION: containing a: 3 etc…
Affected versions
PyPI
| Package | Vulnerable | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| grpcio | < 1.53.2 |
1.53.2 |
| grpcio | >= 1.54.0, < 1.54.3 |
1.54.3 |
| grpcio | >= 1.55.0, < 1.55.2 |
1.55.2 |
| grpcio | >= 1.56.0, < 1.56.2 |
1.56.2 |
| grpcio | < 1.53.2>= 1.54.0, < 1.54.3>= 1.55.0, < 1.55.2>= 1.56.0, < 1.56.2 |
1.53.21.54.31.55.21.56.2 |
RubyGems
| Package | Vulnerable | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| grpc | < 1.53.2 |
1.53.2 |
| grpc | >= 1.54.0, < 1.54.3 |
1.54.3 |
| grpc | >= 1.55.0, < 1.55.2 |
1.55.2 |
| grpc | >= 1.56.0, < 1.56.2 |
1.56.2 |
How to fix
Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.
grpcio PyPI → 1.53.2
- pip
pip install --upgrade "grpcio>=1.53.2"- poetry
poetry add "grpcio>=1.53.2"- uv
uv add "grpcio>=1.53.2"
grpc RubyGems → 1.53.2
- bundler
bundle update grpc # Gemfile: gem "grpc", ">= 1.53.2"
Severity breakdown
CVSS 3.1 7.5
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Attack vector
- Network
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
Weakness
CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
The product allocates a reusable resource or group of resources on behalf of an actor without imposing any intended restrictions on the size or number of resources that can be allocated.
How to prevent it
- Requirements: Clearly specify the minimum and maximum expectations for capabilities, and dictate which behaviors are acceptable when resource allocation reaches limits.
- Architecture and Design: Limit the amount of resources that are accessible to unprivileged users. Set per-user limits for resources. Allow the system administrator to define these limits. Be careful to avoid CWE-410.
- Architecture and Design: Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place, and it will help the administrator to identify who is committing the abuse. The login application should be protected against DoS attacks as much as possible. Limiting the database access, perhaps by caching result sets, can help minimize the resources expended. To further limit the potential for a DoS attack, consider tracking the rate of requests received from users and blocking requests that exceed a defined rate threshold.
- Implementation: Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does. When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, "boat" may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as "red" or "blue." Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code's environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright.
- Architecture and Design: For any security checks that are performed on the client side, ensure that these checks are duplicated on the server side, in order to avoid CWE-602. Attackers can bypass the client-side checks by modifying values after the checks have been performed, or by changing the client to remove the client-side checks entirely. Then, these modified values would be submitted to the server.
- Architecture and Design: Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, typically by using increasing time delays uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed. The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question. The second solution can be difficult to effectively institute -- and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply requires more resources on the part of the attacker.
- Architecture and Design: Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
- Architecture and Design, Implementation: If the program must fail, ensure that it fails gracefully (fails closed). There may be a temptation to simply let the program fail poorly in cases such as low memory conditions, but an attacker may be able to assert control before the software has fully exited. Alternately, an uncontrolled failure could cause cascading problems with other downstream components; for example, the program could send a signal to a downstream process so the process immediately knows that a problem has occurred and has a better chance of recovery. Ensure that all failures in resource allocation place the system into a safe posture.
- Operation, Architecture and Design: Use quotas or other resource-limiting settings provided by the operating system or environment. For example, when managing system resources in POSIX, setrlimit() can be used to set limits for certain types of resources, and getrlimit() can determine how many resources are available. However, these functions are not available on all operating systems. When the current levels get close to the maximum that is defined for the application (see CWE-770), then limit the allocation of further resources to privileged users; alternately, begin releasing resources for less-privileged users. While this mitigation may protect the system from attack, it will not necessarily stop attackers from adversely impacting other users. Ensure that the application performs the appropriate error checks and error handling in case resources become unavailable (CWE-703).
CWE-789: Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value
The product allocates memory based on an untrusted, large size value, but it does not ensure that the size is within expected limits, allowing arbitrary amounts of memory to be allocated.
How to prevent it
- Implementation, Architecture and Design: Perform adequate input validation against any value that influences the amount of memory that is allocated. Define an appropriate strategy for handling requests that exceed the limit, and consider supporting a configuration option so that the administrator can extend the amount of memory to be used if necessary.
- Operation: Run your program using system-provided resource limits for memory. This might still cause the program to crash or exit, but the impact to the rest of the system will be minimized.
References
Advisories
Packages
Other links
Timeline
- Published
- Last updated by the source
- Latest EPSS score
Related advisories
| Advisory | Severity | Why it's related |
|---|---|---|
| GHSA-p25m-jpj4-qcrr Denial of Service Vulnerability in gRPC TCP Server (Posix-compatible platforms) | High | Also affects grpc |
| GHSA-9hxf-ppjv-w6rq gRPC connection termination issue | Medium | Also affects grpc |
| GHSA-6628-q6j9-w8vg gRPC Reachable Assertion issue | High | Also affects grpc |
| GHSA-cfgp-2977-2fmm Connection confusion in gRPC | High | Also affects grpc |
| GHSA-62m5-6wh8-28x7 pypdf has possible long runtimes/large memory usage for encrypted PDF files | High | Same weakness, CWE-770 |
| GHSA-9wfm-jcj8-jfv9 russh's SSH agent server is susceptible to unbound allocations via repeated SSH_AGENT_CONSTRAIN_CONFIRM messages | Low | Same weakness, CWE-770 |
| GHSA-4p9f-7p9m-5vfg russh's SSH client is susceptible to unbounded allocations via EXT_INFO packets | Medium | Same weakness, CWE-770 |
| GHSA-x3rh-gjgm-fmqc pypdf has possible large memory usage when parsing cross-reference streams | High | Same weakness, CWE-770 |
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