Cyber Resilience

CVE-2024-35238

MediumDDoS

Published: 27 May 2024

Published
27 May 2024
Modified
15 April 2026
KEV Added
Patch
CVSS Score v3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0036 58.5th percentile
Risk Priority 11 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2024-35238 is a medium-severity Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) vulnerability. Its CVSS base score is 5.3 (Medium).

Operationally, ranked in the top 41.5% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability details

Minder by Stacklok is an open source software supply chain security platform. Minder prior to version 0.0.51 is vulnerable to a denial-of-service (DoS) attack which could allow an attacker to crash the Minder server and deny other users access to…

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it. The root cause of the vulnerability is that Minders sigstore verifier reads an untrusted response entirely into memory without enforcing a limit on the response body. An attacker can exploit this by making Minder make a request to an attacker-controlled endpoint which returns a response with a large body which will crash the Minder server. Specifically, the point of failure is where Minder parses the response from the GitHub attestations endpoint in `getAttestationReply`. Here, Minder makes a request to the `orgs/$owner/attestations/$checksumref` GitHub endpoint (line 285) and then parses the response into the `AttestationReply` (line 295). The way Minder parses the response on line 295 makes it prone to DoS if the response is large enough. Essentially, the response needs to be larger than the machine has available memory. Version 0.0.51 contains a patch for this issue. The content that is hosted at the `orgs/$owner/attestations/$checksumref` GitHub attestation endpoint is controlled by users including unauthenticated users to Minders threat model. However, a user will need to configure their own Minder settings to cause Minder to make Minder send a request to fetch the attestations. The user would need to know of a package whose attestations were configured in such a way that they would return a large response when fetching them. As such, the steps needed to carry out this attack would look as such: 1. The attacker adds a package to ghcr.io with attestations that can be fetched via the `orgs/$owner/attestations/$checksumref` GitHub endpoint. 2. The attacker registers on Minder and makes Minder fetch the attestations. 3. Minder fetches attestations and crashes thereby being denied of service.

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.

addresses: CWE-770

This control implements explicit throttling on session allocation, addressing the weakness of allocating resources without limits.

addresses: CWE-770

Plan testing exercises resource allocation limits and throttling during simulated failures, directly addressing weaknesses that allow unbounded resource use.

addresses: CWE-770

Contingency plan updates ensure recovery strategies address unbounded resource allocation, making it harder for attackers to exploit lack of throttling to cause prolonged outages.

addresses: CWE-770

Provides continuity when unbounded resource allocation at the primary site leads to exhaustion and downtime.

addresses: CWE-770

Alternate services allow operations to continue when primary allocation of resources lacks limits or throttling.

addresses: CWE-770

Explicit planning of security-related actions requires defining limits, windows, and resource allocations, making allocation without throttling far less likely.

addresses: CWE-770

Measures of performance include tracking allocation behavior and throttling effectiveness, reducing the window for resource exhaustion attacks.

addresses: CWE-770

Imposes an inactivity-based limit on network resource allocation, throttling the number of concurrently held connections.

References