HTTP/2 Rapid reset attack The HTTP/2 protocol allows clients to indicate to the server that a previous stream should be canceled by sending a RSTSTREAM frame. The protocol does not require the client and server to coordinate the cancellation in any way, the client may do it unilaterally. The client may also assume that the cancellation will take effect immediately when the server receives the RSTSTREAM frame, before any other data from that TCP connection is processed.
Abuse of this feature is called a Rapid Reset attack because it relies on the ability for an endpoint to send a RSTSTREAM frame immediately after sending a request frame, which makes the other endpoint start working and then rapidly resets the request. The request is canceled, but leaves the HTTP/2 connection open.
The HTTP/2 Rapid Reset attack built on this capability is simple: The client opens a large number of streams at once as in the standard HTTP/2 attack, but rather than waiting for a response to each request stream from the server or proxy, the client cancels each request immediately.
The ability to reset streams immediately allows each connection to have an indefinite number of requests in flight. By explicitly canceling the requests, the attacker never exceeds the limit on the number of concurrent open streams. The number of in-flight requests is no longer dependent on the round-trip time (RTT), but only on the available network bandwidth.
In a typical HTTP/2 server implementation, the server will still have to do significant amounts of work for canceled requests, such as allocating new stream data structures, parsing the query and doing header decompression, and mapping the URL to a resource. For reverse proxy implementations, the request may be proxied to the backend server before the RSTSTREAM frame is processed. The client on the other hand paid almost no costs for sending the requests. This creates an exploitable cost asymmetry between the server and the client.
Multiple software artifacts implementing HTTP/2 are affected. This advisory was originally ingested from the swift-nio-http2 repo advisory and their original conent follows.
swift-nio-http2 specific advisory swift-nio-http2 is vulnerable to a denial-of-service vulnerability in which a malicious client can create and then reset a large number of HTTP/2 streams in a short period of time. This causes swift-nio-http2 to commit to a large amount of expensive work which it then throws away, including creating entirely new Channels to serve the traffic. This can easily overwhelm an EventLoop and prevent it from making forward progress.
swift-nio-http2 1.28 contains a remediation for this issue that applies reset counter using a sliding window. This constrains the number of stream resets that may occur in a given window of time. Clients violating this limit will have their connections torn down. This allows clients to continue to cancel streams for legitimate reasons, while constraining malicious actors.
Cisco IOS XR software health check opens TCP port 6379 by default on activation. An attacker can connect to the Redis instance on the open port and allow access to the Redis instance that is running within the NOSi container.
Multiple vulnerabilities in the Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol (DVMRP) feature of Cisco IOS XR Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to either immediately crash the Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) process or make it consume available memory and eventually crash. The memory consumption may negatively impact other processes that are running on the device. These vulnerabilities are due to the incorrect handling of IGMP packets. An attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities by sending crafted IGMP traffic to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to immediately crash the IGMP process or cause memory exhaustion, resulting in other processes becoming unstable. These processes may include, but are not limited to, interior and exterior routing protocols. Cisco will release software updates that address these vulnerabilities.
A vulnerability in the Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol (DVMRP) feature of Cisco IOS XR Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to exhaust process memory of an affected device. The vulnerability is due to insufficient queue management for Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) packets. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted IGMP traffic to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause memory exhaustion, resulting in instability of other processes. These processes may include, but are not limited to, interior and exterior routing protocols. Cisco will release software updates that address this vulnerability.
A vulnerability in the Cisco Discovery Protocol implementation for Cisco IOS XR Software could allow an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to execute arbitrary code or cause a reload on an affected device. The vulnerability is due to improper validation of string input from certain fields in Cisco Discovery Protocol messages. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a malicious Cisco Discovery Protocol packet to an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause a stack overflow, which could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code with administrative privileges on an affected device. Cisco Discovery Protocol is a Layer 2 protocol. To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must be in the same broadcast domain as the affected device (Layer 2 adjacent).
Format string vulnerability in the Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) subsystem of Cisco IOS Software, Cisco IOS XE Software, and Cisco IOS XR Software could allow an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition or execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges on an affected device.
Multiple Buffer Overflow vulnerabilities in the Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) subsystem of Cisco IOS Software, Cisco IOS XE Software, and Cisco IOS XR Software could allow an unauthenticated, adjacent attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition or execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges on an affected device. Cisco Bug IDs: CSCuo17183, CSCvd73487.
The server IKEv1 implementation in Cisco IOS 12.2 through 12.4 and 15.0 through 15.6, IOS XE through 3.18S, IOS XR 4.3.x and 5.0.x through 5.2.x, and PIX before 7.0 allows remote attackers to obtain sensitive information from device memory via a Security Association (SA) negotiation request, aka Bug IDs CSCvb29204 and CSCvb36055 or BENIGNCERTAIN.
Cisco IOS XR 3.4.0 through 3.9.1, when BGP is enabled, does not properly handle unrecognized transitive attributes, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (peering reset) via a crafted prefix announcement, as demonstrated in the wild in August 2010 with attribute type code 99, aka Bug ID CSCti62211.
Cisco IOS XR 3.4.0 through 3.8.1 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (session reset) via a BGP UPDATE message with an invalid attribute, as demonstrated in the wild on 17 August 2009.