Vulnerability · Published May 21, 2024 · Assigned by Dfinity

CVE-2024-4435BTreeMap memory leak when deallocating nodes with overflows

Medium 5.9

In plain English

A medium-severity memory leak in ic-stable-structures from Internet Computer. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.5% (higher than 44% of all known vulnerabilities).

Severity (CVSS 3.1)5.9Medium
Exploit odds (30 days)0.5%top 55.9% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none
Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

When storing unbounded types in a BTreeMap, a node is represented as a linked list of "memory chunks". It was discovered recently that when we deallocate a node, in some cases only the first memory chunk is deallocated, and the rest of the memory chunks remain (incorrectly) allocated, causing a memory leak. In the worst case, depending on how a canister uses the BTreeMap, an adversary could interact with the canister through its API and trigger interactions with the map that keep consuming memory due to the memory leak. This could potentially lead to using an excessive amount of memory, or even running out of memory. This issue has been fixed in #212 https://github.com/dfinity/stable-structures/pull/212  by changing the logic for deallocating nodes to ensure that all of a node's memory chunks are deallocated and users are asked to upgrade to version 0.6.4.. Tests have been added to prevent regressions of this nature moving forward. Note: Users of stable-structure < 0.6.0 are not affected. Users who are not storing unbounded types in BTreeMap are not affected and do not need to upgrade. Otherwise, an upgrade to version 0.6.4 is necessary.

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
Internet Computer ic-stable-structures 0.6.0 – before 0.6.4

Weakness: CWE-401 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

References