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Helm Vulnerable to denial of service through string value parsing

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Aug 24, 2022 in helm/helm • Updated Aug 30, 2023

Package

gomod helm.sh/helm/v3 (Go)

Affected versions

< 3.9.4

Patched versions

3.9.4

Description

Fuzz testing, by Ada Logics and sponsored by the CNCF, identified input to functions in the _strvals_ package that can cause an out of memory panic. Out of memory panics cannot be recovered from. Applications that use functions from the _strvals_ package in the Helm SDK can have a Denial of Service attack when they use this package and it panics.

Impact

The _strvals_ package contains a parser that turns strings into Go structures. For example, the Helm client has command line flags like --set, --set-string, and others that enable the user to pass in strings that are merged into the values. The _strvals_ package converts these strings into structures Go can work with. Some string inputs can cause array data structures to be created causing an out of memory panic.

Applications that use the _strvals_ package in the Helm SDK to parse user supplied input can suffer a Denial of Service when that input causes a panic that cannot be recovered from.

The Helm Client will panic with input to --set, --set-string, and other value setting flags that causes an out of memory panic. Helm is not a long running service so the panic will not affect future uses of the Helm client.

Patches

This issue has been resolved in 3.9.4.

Workarounds

SDK users can validate strings supplied by users won't create large arrays causing significant memory usage before passing them to the _strvals_ functions.

For more information

Helm's security policy is spelled out in detail in our SECURITY document.

Credits

Disclosed by Ada Logics in a fuzzing audit sponsored by CNCF.

References

@mattfarina mattfarina published to helm/helm Aug 24, 2022
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Aug 30, 2022
Reviewed Aug 30, 2022
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Sep 1, 2022
Last updated Aug 30, 2023

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS score

0.076%
(34th percentile)

CVE ID

CVE-2022-36055

GHSA ID

GHSA-7hfp-qfw3-5jxh

Source code

Credits

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