GO-2023-1704 BIT-golang-2023-24534 CVE-2023-24534
Excessive memory allocation in net/http and net/textproto
- Severity
- 7.5 / 10
- High · CVSS 3.1
- Exploit chance (EPSS)
- 1.89%
- Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 79.53% of scored vulnerabilities.
- Known exploited
- No
- Not in CISA's catalog
- Weakness
- CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
- Fix
1.20.3- Upgrade stdlib to this version or later
Description
HTTP and MIME header parsing can allocate large amounts of memory, even when parsing small inputs, potentially leading to a denial of service.
Certain unusual patterns of input data can cause the common function used to parse HTTP and MIME headers to allocate substantially more memory than required to hold the parsed headers. An attacker can exploit this behavior to cause an HTTP server to allocate large amounts of memory from a small request, potentially leading to memory exhaustion and a denial of service.
With fix, header parsing now correctly allocates only the memory required to hold parsed headers.
Affected versions
Go
| Package | Vulnerable | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| stdlib | < 1.19.8>= 1.20.0-0, < 1.20.3 |
1.19.81.20.3 |
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.
stdlib Go → 1.20.3
- go
go get stdlib@v1.20.3 && go mod tidy
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-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
Fixes and patches
Issue reports
Other links
Timeline
- Published
- Last updated by the source
- Latest EPSS score
Related advisories
| Advisory | Severity | Why it's related |
|---|---|---|
| GHSA-4374-p667-p6c8 HTTP/2 rapid reset can cause excessive work in net/http | High Known exploited | Also affects stdlib |
| CVE-2020-0601 Certificate validation bypass on Windows in crypto/x509 | High Known exploited | Also affects stdlib |
| RUSTSEC-2026-0382 Distrust compromised intermediate certificates in crypto/x509 | Medium | Also affects stdlib |
| GO-2026-6613 HTTP/1 server connection desynchronization after 2xx CONNECT response in net/http | High | Also affects stdlib |
| GO-2026-6609 Lack of limit on size of parsed Range headers in net/http | High | Also affects stdlib |
| GO-2026-6608 Memory limit bypass when parsing MIME headers in net/textproto, mime/multipart | High | Also affects stdlib |
| GO-2026-6607 Reject malformed ECH outer extension references in crypto/tls | High | Also affects stdlib |
| GO-2026-6604 Root.Mkdir(All) can follow junctions out of the root on Windows in os | Critical | Also affects stdlib |
Credits: Jakob Ackermann (@das7pad)
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