CVE-2023-45130
Published: 13 October 2023
Summary
CVE-2023-45130 is a high-severity Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) vulnerability in Parity Frontier. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, ranked at the 48.9th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-49449
Vulnerability details
Frontier is Substrate's Ethereum compatibility layer. Prior to commit aea528198b3b226e0d20cce878551fd4c0e3d5d0, at the end of a contract execution, when opcode SUICIDE marks a contract to be deleted, the software uses `storage::remove_prefix` (now renamed to `storage::clear_prefix`) to remove all storages associated with…
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it. This is a single IO primitive call passing the WebAssembly boundary. For large contracts, the call (without providing a `limit` parameter) can be slow. In addition, for parachains, all storages to be deleted will be part of the PoV, which easily exceed relay chain PoV size limit. On the other hand, Frontier's maintainers only charge a fixed cost for opcode SUICIDE. The maintainers consider the severity of this issue high, because an attacker can craft a contract with a lot of storage values on a parachain, and then call opcode SUICIDE on the contract. If the transaction makes into a parachain block, the parachain will then stall because the PoV size will exceed relay chain's limit. This is especially an issue for XCM transactions, because they can't be skipped. Commit aea528198b3b226e0d20cce878551fd4c0e3d5d0 contains a patch for this issue. For parachains, it's recommended to issue an emergency runtime upgrade as soon as possible. For standalone chains, the impact is less severe because the issue mainly affects PoV sizes. It's recommended to issue a normal runtime upgrade as soon as possible. There are no known workarounds.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
This control implements explicit throttling on session allocation, addressing the weakness of allocating resources without limits.
Plan testing exercises resource allocation limits and throttling during simulated failures, directly addressing weaknesses that allow unbounded resource use.
Contingency plan updates ensure recovery strategies address unbounded resource allocation, making it harder for attackers to exploit lack of throttling to cause prolonged outages.
Provides continuity when unbounded resource allocation at the primary site leads to exhaustion and downtime.
Alternate services allow operations to continue when primary allocation of resources lacks limits or throttling.
Explicit planning of security-related actions requires defining limits, windows, and resource allocations, making allocation without throttling far less likely.
Measures of performance include tracking allocation behavior and throttling effectiveness, reducing the window for resource exhaustion attacks.
Imposes an inactivity-based limit on network resource allocation, throttling the number of concurrently held connections.