GHSA-wjxj-5m7g-mg7q CVE-2023-33202
Bouncy Castle Denial of Service (DoS)
Medium
Maven
- Severity
- 5.5 / 10
- Medium · CVSS 3.1
- Exploit chance (EPSS)
- 1.00%
- Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 62.77% of scored vulnerabilities.
- Known exploited
- No
- Not in CISA's catalog
- Weakness
- CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
- Fix
- Available
- 8 packages have a fixed version
Description
Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.73 contains a potential Denial of Service (DoS) issue within the Bouncy Castle org.bouncycastle.openssl.PEMParser class. This class parses OpenSSL PEM encoded streams containing X.509 certificates, PKCS8 encoded keys, and PKCS7 objects. Parsing a file that has crafted ASN.1 data through the PEMParser causes an OutOfMemoryError, which can enable a denial of service attack.
Affected versions
Maven
| Package | Vulnerable | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| org.bouncycastle:bcpkix-jdk18on | < 1.73 |
1.73 |
| org.bouncycastle:bcprov-ext-jdk15on | < 1.73 |
1.73 |
| org.bouncycastle:bcprov-ext-jdk16 | < 1.73 |
1.73 |
| org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14 | < 1.73 |
1.73 |
| org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15 | < 1.73 |
1.73 |
| org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15on | all versions |
No fix yet |
| org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15to18 | < 1.73 |
1.73 |
| org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk16 | < 1.73 |
1.73 |
| org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk18on | < 1.73 |
1.73 |
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.
org.bouncycastle:bcpkix-jdk18on Maven → 1.73
- maven
<dependency><groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId><artifactId>bcpkix-jdk18on</artifactId><version>1.73</version></dependency>- gradle
implementation("org.bouncycastle:bcpkix-jdk18on:1.73")
org.bouncycastle:bcprov-ext-jdk15on Maven → 1.73
- maven
<dependency><groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId><artifactId>bcprov-ext-jdk15on</artifactId><version>1.73</version></dependency>- gradle
implementation("org.bouncycastle:bcprov-ext-jdk15on:1.73")
org.bouncycastle:bcprov-ext-jdk16 Maven → 1.73
- maven
<dependency><groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId><artifactId>bcprov-ext-jdk16</artifactId><version>1.73</version></dependency>- gradle
implementation("org.bouncycastle:bcprov-ext-jdk16:1.73")
org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14 Maven → 1.73
- maven
<dependency><groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId><artifactId>bcprov-jdk14</artifactId><version>1.73</version></dependency>- gradle
implementation("org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14:1.73")
org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15 Maven → 1.73
- maven
<dependency><groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId><artifactId>bcprov-jdk15</artifactId><version>1.73</version></dependency>- gradle
implementation("org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15:1.73")
org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15to18 Maven → 1.73
- maven
<dependency><groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId><artifactId>bcprov-jdk15to18</artifactId><version>1.73</version></dependency>- gradle
implementation("org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15to18:1.73")
org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk16 Maven → 1.73
- maven
<dependency><groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId><artifactId>bcprov-jdk16</artifactId><version>1.73</version></dependency>- gradle
implementation("org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk16:1.73")
org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk18on Maven → 1.73
- maven
<dependency><groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId><artifactId>bcprov-jdk18on</artifactId><version>1.73</version></dependency>- gradle
implementation("org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk18on:1.73")
Severity breakdown
CVSS 3.1 5.5
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Attack vector
- Local
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- Required
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
Weakness
CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
How to prevent it
- 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. 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.
- 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, or 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 is simply difficult to effectively institute -- and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply makes the attack require more resources on the part of the attacker.
- Architecture and Design: Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
- Implementation: Ensure that all failures in resource allocation place the system into a safe posture.
References
Advisories
Packages
Other links
Timeline
- Published
- Last updated by the source
- Latest EPSS score
Related advisories
| Advisory | Severity | Why it's related |
|---|---|---|
| GHSA-p93r-85wp-75v3 Bouncy Castle Has Covert Timing Channel Vulnerability | High | Also affects org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14 |
| GHSA-c3fc-8qff-9hwx Bouncy Castle has an LDAP injection | Medium | Also affects org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14 |
| GHSA-574f-3g2m-x479 Bouncy Castle for Java GOST 28147 CTR mode reuses keystream after 255 blocks | High | Also affects org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14 |
| GHSA-67mf-3cr5-8w23 Bouncy Castle for Java on All (API modules) allows Excessive Allocation | Medium | Also affects org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14 |
| GHSA-m44j-cfrm-g8qc Bouncy Castle crafted signature and public key can be used to trigger an infinite loop | High | Also affects org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14 |
| GHSA-v435-xc8x-wvr9 Bouncy Castle affected by timing side-channel for RSA key exchange ("The Marvin Attack") | Medium | Also affects org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14 |
| GHSA-8xfc-gm6g-vgpv Bouncy Castle certificate parsing issues cause high CPU usage during parameter evaluation. | High | Also affects org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14 |
| GHSA-4h8f-2wvx-gg5w Bouncy Castle Java Cryptography API vulnerable to DNS poisoning | High | Also affects org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14 |
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