CVE-2023-45288

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Last Modified: UTC

Important Important Impact What does this mean?
7.5 CVSS v3 Base Score

Description

A vulnerability was discovered with the implementation of the HTTP/2 protocol in the Go programming language. There were insufficient limitations on the amount of CONTINUATION frames sent within a single stream. An attacker could potentially exploit this to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) attack.

Statement

Red Hat rates the security impact of this vulnerability as Important due to the worst case scenario resulting in a denial of service. It is simple to exploit, could significantly impact availability, and there is not a suitable mitigation for all use cases. Once an attack has ended, the system should return to normal operations on its own.

This vulnerability only impacts servers which have HTTP/2 enabled. It stems from an imperfect definition of the protocol. As the Go programming language is widely utilized across nearly every major Red Hat offering, a full listing of impacted packages will not be provided. Therefore, the “Affected Packages and Issued Red Hat Security Errata” section contains a simplified list of what offerings need to remediate this vulnerability. Every impacted offering has at least one representative component listed, but potentially not all of them. Rest assured that Red Hat is committed to remediating this vulnerability across our entire portfolio.

Many components are rated as Low impact due to configurations which reduce the attack surface or significantly increase the difficulty of exploitation. A summary of these scenarios are:

  • The container includes a package that provides a vulnerable webserver, but it is not used or running during operation
  • HTTP/2 is disabled by default and is not supported
  • Only a client implementation is provided, which is not vulnerable
  • A vulnerable module (either golang.org/net/http or golang.org/x/net/http2) is included, but disabled
  • Access to a vulnerable server is restricted within the container (loopback only connections)
  • Golang is available in the container but is not used

Within the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, the majority of vulnerable components are not externally accessible. This means an attacker must already have access to a container within your environment to exploit this vulnerability. However, the ose-hyperkube (openshift-enterprise-hyperkube) container is externally accessible, so there are less barriers to exploitation. Fixes for this specific container are already available.

Within Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, the impacted component is Receptor. The impact has been reduced to Low as the vulnerable code is present, but not utilized. There are three potential exposures within this component:

  • Receptor utilizes QUIC a UDP based protocol which does not run over HTTP/2
  • Receptor utilizes the x/net/ipv4 and ipv6 packages, both of which are not affected

Mitigation

In some environments where http/2 support is not required, it may be possible to disable this feature to reduce risk.

Additional Information

External References

Content from www.cve.org is not included.https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-45288

Content from nvd.nist.gov is not included.https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-45288

Content from nowotarski.info is not included.https://nowotarski.info/http2-continuation-flood/

Content from pkg.go.dev is not included.https://pkg.go.dev/vuln/GO-2024-2687

Content from www.kb.cert.org is not included.https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/421644

Affected Packages and Issued Red Hat Security Errata

Products / Services Components State Errata
Builds for Red Hat OpenShift openshift-builds-operator-container Fixed RHSA-2024:6221
Builds for Red Hat OpenShift 1.1.0 openshift-builds/openshift-builds-rhel9-operator Fixed RHSA-2024:5013
Cost Management Metrics Operator costmanagement-metrics-operator-container Affected
Cryostat 2 on RHEL 8 cryostat-tech-preview/cryostat-grafana-dashboard-rhel8 Fixed RHSA-2024:2088
Cryostat 2 on RHEL 8 cryostat-tech-preview/cryostat-operator-bundle Fixed RHSA-2024:2088
Cryostat 2 on RHEL 8 cryostat-tech-preview/cryostat-reports-rhel8 Fixed RHSA-2024:2088
Cryostat 2 on RHEL 8 cryostat-tech-preview/cryostat-rhel8 Fixed RHSA-2024:2088
Cryostat 2 on RHEL 8 cryostat-tech-preview/cryostat-rhel8-operator Fixed RHSA-2024:2088
Cryostat 2 on RHEL 8 cryostat-tech-preview/jfr-datasource-rhel8 Fixed RHSA-2024:2088
Fence Agents Remediation Operator workload-availability/fence-agents-remediation-rhel8-operator Will not fix
Unless explicitly stated as not affected, all previous versions of packages in any minor update stream of a product listed here should be assumed vulnerable, although may not have been subject to full analysis.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authorities (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications ).

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown Red Hat NVD
CVSS v3 Base Score 7.5
Attack Vector Network
Attack Complexity Low
Privileges Required None
User Interaction None
Scope Unchanged
Confidentiality Impact None
Integrity Impact None
Availability Impact High

CVSS v3 Vector

Red Hat CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Acknowledgements

Red Hat would like to thank Bartek Nowotarski (nowotarski.info) for reporting this issue.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Red Hat's CVSS v3 score or Impact different from other vendors?

 For open source software shipped by multiple vendors, the CVSS base scores may vary for each vendor's version depending on the version they ship, how they ship it, the platform, and even how the software is compiled. This makes scoring of vulnerabilities difficult for third-party vulnerability databases such as NVD that only provide a single CVSS base score for each vulnerability. Red Hat scores reflect how a vulnerability affects our products specifically.

For more information, see https://access.redhat.com/solutions/762393.

My product is listed as "Under investigation" or "Affected", when will Red Hat release a fix for this vulnerability?
  • "Under investigation" doesn't necessarily mean that the product is affected by this vulnerability. It only means that our Analysis Team is still working on determining whether the product is affected and how it is affected.
  • "Affected" means that our Analysis Team has determined that this product is affected by this vulnerability and might release a fix to address this in the near future.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Will not fix"?

 A "will not fix" status means that a fix for an affected product version is not planned or not possible due to complexity, which may create additional risk.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Upgrade to a supported product version that includes a fix for this vulnerability (recommended).
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Fix deferred"?

 A deferred status means that a fix for an affected product version is not guaranteed due to higher-priority development work.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.
  • Red Hat Engineering focuses on addressing high-priority issues based on their complexity or limited lifecycle support. Therefore, lower-priority issues will not receive immediate fixes.

What is a mitigation?

 A mitigation is an action that can be taken to reduce the impact of a security vulnerability, without deploying any fixes.

I have a Red Hat product but it is not in the above list, is it affected?

 The listed products were found to include one or more of the components that this vulnerability affects. These products underwent a thorough evaluation to determine their affectedness by this vulnerability. Note that layered products (such as container-based offerings) that consume affected components from any of the products listed in this table may be affected and are not represented.

Why is my security scanner reporting my product as vulnerable to this vulnerability even though my product version is fixed or not affected?

 In order to maintain code stability and compatibility, Red Hat usually does not rebase packages to entirely new versions. Instead, we backport fixes and new features to an older version of the package we distribute. This can result in some security scanners that only consider the package version to report the package as vulnerable. To avoid this, we suggest that you use an approved vulnerability scanner from our This content is not included.Red Hat Vulnerability Scanner Certification program.

My product is listed as "Out of Support Scope". What does this mean?

 When a product is listed as "Out of Support Scope", it means a vulnerability with the impact level assigned to this CVE is no longer covered by its current support lifecycle phase. The product has been identified to contain the impacted component, but analysis to determine whether it is affected or not by this vulnerability was not performed. The product should be assumed to be affected. Customers are advised to apply any mitigation options documented on this page, consider removing or disabling the impacted component, or upgrade to a supported version of the product that has an update available.