Denial of Service (DoS)

Affecting node package, versions [15.0.0, 15.10.0) || [14.0.0, 14.16.0) || [12.0.0, 12.21.0) || [10.0.0, 10.24.0)

Overview

node is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS). When too many connection attempts with an HTTP2 unknownProtocol are established. This leads to a leak of file descriptors. If a file descriptor limit is configured on the system, then the server is unable to accept new connections and prevent the process also from opening. If no file descriptor limit is configured, then this leads to an excessive memory usage and causes the system to run out of memory.

Details

Denial of Service (DoS) describes a family of attacks, all aimed at making a system inaccessible to its intended and legitimate users.

Unlike other vulnerabilities, DoS attacks usually do not aim at breaching security. Rather, they are focused on making websites and services unavailable to genuine users resulting in downtime.

One popular Denial of Service vulnerability is DDoS (a Distributed Denial of Service), an attack that attempts to clog network pipes to the system by generating a large volume of traffic from many machines.

When it comes to open source libraries, DoS vulnerabilities allow attackers to trigger such a crash or crippling of the service by using a flaw either in the application code or from the use of open source libraries.

Two common types of DoS vulnerabilities:

• High CPU/Memory Consumption- An attacker sending crafted requests that could cause the system to take a disproportionate amount of time to process. For example, commons-fileupload:commons-fileupload.

• Crash - An attacker sending crafted requests that could cause the system to crash. For Example, npm ws package

Remediation

Upgrade node to version 15.10.0, 14.16.0, 12.21.0, 10.24.0 or higher.

References

• GitHub Commit
• NodeJS Security Release