Red Hat Security Advisory 2024-1700-03

Red Hat Security Advisory 2024-1752-03 - An update is now available for Red Hat OpenShift GitOps v1.12.1 for Argo CD CLI and MicroShift GitOps. Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having a security impact of Important. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from the CVE link in the References section. Issues addressed include bypass and denial of service vulnerabilities.

Red Hat Security Advisory 2024-1697-03 - An update is now available for Red Hat OpenShift GitOps v1.11.3. Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having a security impact of Important. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from the CVE link in the References section. Issues addressed include bypass and denial of service vulnerabilities.

### Impact All versions of ArgoCD starting from v2.4 have a bug where the ArgoCD repo-server component is vulnerable to a Denial-of-Service attack vector. Specifically, it's possible to crash the repo server component through an out of memory error by pointing it to a malicious Helm registry. The loadRepoIndex() function in the ArgoCD's helm package, does not limit the size nor time while fetching the data. It fetches it and creates a byte slice from the retrieved data in one go. If the registry is implemented to push data continuously, the repo server will keep allocating memory until it runs out of it. ### Patches A patch for this vulnerability has been released in the following Argo CD versions: v2.10.5 v2.9.10 v2.8.14 ### For more information If you have any questions or comments about this advisory: Open an issue in [the Argo CD issue tracker](https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/issues) or [discussions](https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/discussions) Join us on [Slack](https...

### Summary An attacker can effectively bypass the rate limit and brute force protections by exploiting the application's weak cache-based mechanism. This loophole in security can be combined with other vulnerabilities to attack the default admin account. This flaw undermines a previously [patched CVE](https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/en/stable/security_considerations/#cve-2020-8827-insufficient-anti-automationanti-brute-force) intended to protect against brute-force attacks. ### Details The application's brute force protection relies on a cache mechanism that tracks login attempts for each user. This cache is limited to a `defaultMaxCacheSize` of 1000 entries. An attacker can overflow this cache by bombarding it with login attempts for different users, thereby pushing out the admin account's failed attempts and effectively resetting the rate limit for that account. The brute force protection mechanism's code: ```go if failed && len(failures) >= getMaximumCacheSize() { log.Wa...

### Summary An attacker can exploit a critical flaw in the application to initiate a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, rendering the application inoperable and affecting all users. The issue arises from unsafe manipulation of an array in a multi-threaded environment. ### Details The vulnerability is rooted in the application's code, where an array is being modified while it is being iterated over. This is a classic programming error but becomes critically unsafe when executed in a multi-threaded environment. When two threads interact with the same array simultaneously, the application crashes. The core issue is located in [expireOldFailedAttempts](https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/blob/54601c8fd30b86a4c4b7eb449956264372c8bde0/util/session/sessionmanager.go#L302-L311) function: ```go func expireOldFailedAttempts(maxAge time.Duration, failures *map[string]LoginAttempts) int { expiredCount := 0 for key, attempt := range *failures { if time.Since(attempt.LastFailed) > maxAge*time.Sec...

### Summary An attacker can exploit a chain of vulnerabilities, including a Denial of Service (DoS) flaw and in-memory data storage weakness, to effectively bypass the application's brute force login protection. This makes the application susceptible to brute force attacks, compromising the security of all user accounts. ### Details The issue arises from two main vulnerabilities: 1. The application crashes due to a previously described DoS vulnerability caused by unsafe array modifications in a multi-threaded environment. 2. The application saves the data of failed login attempts in-memory, without persistent storage. When the application crashes and restarts, this data is lost, resetting the brute force protections. ```go // LoginAttempts is a timestamped counter for failed login attempts type LoginAttempts struct { // Time of the last failed login LastFailed time.Time `json:"lastFailed"` // Number of consecutive login failures FailCount int `json:"failCount"` } ``` By chainin...

### Impact "Local sync" is an Argo CD feature that allows developers to temporarily override an Application's manifests with locally-defined manifests. Use of the feature should generally be limited to highly-trusted users, since it allows the user to bypass any merge protections in git. An improper validation bug allows users who have `create` privileges but not `override` privileges to sync local manifests on app creation. All other restrictions, including AppProject restrictions are still enforced. The only restriction which is _not_ enforced is that the manifests come from some approved git/Helm/OCI source. The bug was introduced in 1.2.0-rc1 when the local manifest sync feature was added. ### Patches The bug has been patched in the following versions: * 2.10.3 * 2.9.8 * 2.8.12 ### Workarounds To immediately mitigate the risk of branch protection bypass, remove `applications, create` RBAC access. The only way to eliminate the issue without removing RBAC access is to upgrade...