CVE-2024-7884
Dfinity Canister Developer Kit For The Internet Computer 0.8.0 – 0.8.2
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HSummary
CVE-2024-7884 is a high-severity Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime (CWE-401) vulnerability in Dfinity Canister Developer Kit For The Internet Computer. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked at the 50th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-15 (Development Process, Standards, and Tools) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2024-2871
Vulnerability Data
When a canister method is called via ic_cdk::call* , a new Future CallFuture is created and can be awaited by the caller to get the execution result. Internally, the state of the Future is tracked and stored in a struct…
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called CallFutureState. A bug in the polling implementation of the CallFuture allows multiple references to be held for this internal state and not all references were dropped before the Future is resolved. Since we have unaccounted references held, a copy of the internal state ended up being persisted in the canister's heap and thus causing a memory leak. Impact Canisters built in Rust with ic_cdk and ic_cdk_timers are affected. If these canisters call a canister method, use timers or heartbeat, they will likely leak a small amount of memory on every such operation. In the worst case, this could lead to heap memory exhaustion triggered by an attacker. Motoko based canisters are not affected by the bug. PatchesThe patch has been backported to all minor versions between >= 0.8.0, <= 0.15.0. The patched versions available are 0.8.2, 0.9.3, 0.10.1, 0.11.6, 0.12.2, 0.13.5, 0.14.1, 0.15.1 and their previous versions have been yanked. WorkaroundsThere are no known workarounds at the moment. Developers are recommended to upgrade their canister as soon as possible to the latest available patched version of ic_cdk to avoid running out of Wasm heap memory. Upgrading the canisters (without updating `ic_cdk`) also frees the leaked memory but it's only a temporary solution.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and evaluation (static analysis, fuzzing, or runtime leak detection) directly finds missing deallocation.
Requiring documented development standards and tools can mandate memory-management disciplines that avoid leaks at introduction.
Engineering principles applied during development can require explicit resource-release patterns that stop memory leaks from being coded.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure SDLC practices directly enforce proper memory allocation/deallocation via coding standards, reviews, and tooling.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Security testing in development can detect unreleased memory, providing partial coverage of the weakness.
Secure development life cycle mandates memory-management practices that reduce missing-release defects.
Application security requirements can specify explicit memory-release rules, partially mitigating the weakness.
Secure system architecture and engineering principles include resource-management guidelines that address memory leaks.
Secure coding standards directly require proper allocation/deallocation, covering most of this weakness.
Capacity management may detect memory exhaustion symptoms but does not prevent the coding flaw.