Headline
GHSA-c33x-xqrf-c478: QUIC's Connection ID Mechanism vulnerable to Memory Exhaustion Attack
An attacker can cause its peer to run out of memory sending a large number of NEW_CONNECTION_ID frames that retire old connection IDs. The receiver is supposed to respond to each retirement frame with a RETIRE_CONNECTION_ID frame. The attacker can prevent the receiver from sending out (the vast majority of) these RETIRE_CONNECTION_ID frames by collapsing the peers congestion window (by selectively acknowledging received packets) and by manipulating the peer’s RTT estimate.
I published a more detailed description of the attack and its mitigation in this blog post: https://seemann.io/posts/2024-03-19-exploiting-quics-connection-id-management/. I also presented this attack in the IETF QUIC working group session at IETF 119: https://youtu.be/JqXtYcZAtIA?si=nJ31QKLBSTRXY35U&t=3683
There’s no way to mitigate this attack, please update quic-go to a version that contains the fix.
Package
gomod github.com/quic-go/quic-go (Go)
Affected versions
< 0.42.0
Patched versions
0.42.0
Description
An attacker can cause its peer to run out of memory sending a large number of NEW_CONNECTION_ID frames that retire old connection IDs. The receiver is supposed to respond to each retirement frame with a RETIRE_CONNECTION_ID frame. The attacker can prevent the receiver from sending out (the vast majority of) these RETIRE_CONNECTION_ID frames by collapsing the peers congestion window (by selectively acknowledging received packets) and by manipulating the peer’s RTT estimate.
I published a more detailed description of the attack and its mitigation in this blog post: https://seemann.io/posts/2024-03-19-exploiting-quics-connection-id-management/.
I also presented this attack in the IETF QUIC working group session at IETF 119: https://youtu.be/JqXtYcZAtIA?si=nJ31QKLBSTRXY35U&t=3683
There’s no way to mitigate this attack, please update quic-go to a version that contains the fix.
References
- GHSA-c33x-xqrf-c478
- quic-go/quic-go@4a99b81
- https://seemann.io/posts/2024-03-19-exploiting-quics-connection-id-management
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqXtYcZAtIA&t=3683s
marten-seemann published to quic-go/quic-go
Apr 2, 2024
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database
Apr 2, 2024
Reviewed
Apr 2, 2024
Last updated
Apr 2, 2024
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