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Medium · 5.9 CVE-2023-48230 EUVD-2023-52302

Cap'n Proto WebSocket message can cause crash

Published Nov 21, 2023 · Updated Aug 2, 2024 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

Cap'n Proto is a data interchange format and capability-based RPC system. In versions 1.0 and 1.0.1, when using the KJ HTTP library with WebSocket compression enabled, a buffer underrun can be caused by a remote peer. The underrun always writes a constant value that is not attacker-controlled, likely resulting in a crash, enabling a remote denial-of-service attack. Most Cap'n Proto and KJ users are unlikely to have this functionality enabled and so unlikely to be affected. Maintainers suspect only the Cloudflare Workers Runtime is affected.

If KJ HTTP is used with WebSocket compression enabled, a malicious peer may be able to cause a buffer underrun on a heap-allocated buffer. KJ HTTP is an optional library bundled with Cap'n Proto, but is not directly used by Cap'n Proto. WebSocket compression is disabled by default. It must be enabled via a setting passed to the KJ HTTP library via `HttpClientSettings` or `HttpServerSettings`. The bytes written out-of-bounds are always a specific constant 4-byte string `{ 0x00, 0x00, 0xFF, 0xFF }`. Because this string is not controlled by the attacker, maintainers believe it is unlikely that remote code execution is possible. However, it cannot be ruled out. This functionality first appeared in Cap'n Proto 1.0. Previous versions are not affected.

This issue is fixed in Cap'n Proto 1.0.1.1.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
capnproto capnproto >= 1.0, < 1.0.1.1 —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 capnproto 1.0.1-3 —
Debian 13 capnproto 1.0.1-3 —

Azure Linux

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Azure Linux 3 capnproto No fix yet —

References