CVE-2023-2253

A flaw was found in the /v2/_catalog endpoint in distribution/distribution, which accepts a parameter to control the maximum number of records returned (query string: n). This vulnerability allows a malicious user to submit an unreasonably large value for n, causing the allocation of a massive string array, possibly causing a denial of service through excessive use of memory.

A flaw was found in the /v2/_catalog endpoint in distribution/distribution, which accepts a parameter to control the maximum number of records returned (query string: n). This vulnerability allows a malicious user to submit an unreasonably large value for n, causing the allocation of a massive string array, possibly causing a denial of service through excessive use of memory.

Impact

Systems that run distribution built after a specific commit running on memory-restricted environments can suffer from denial of service by a crafted malicious /v2/_catalog API endpoint request.

Patches

Upgrade to at least 2.8.2-beta.1 if you are running v2.8.x release. If you use the code from the main branch, update at least to the commit after f55a6552b006a381d9167e328808565dd2bf77dc.

Workarounds

There is no way to work around this issue without patching. Restrict access to the affected API endpoint: see the recommendations section.

References

/v2/_catalog endpoint accepts a parameter to control the maximum amount of records returned (query string: n).

When not given the default n=100 is used. The server trusts that n has an acceptable value, however when using a maliciously large value, it allocates an array/slice of n of strings before filling the slice with data.

This behaviour was introduced ~7yrs ago [1].

Recommendation

The /v2/_catalog endpoint was designed specifically to do registry syncs with search or other API systems. Such an endpoint would create a lot of load on the backend system, due to overfetch required to serve a request in certain implementations.

Because of this, we strongly recommend keeping this API endpoint behind heightened privilege and avoiding leaving it exposed to the internet.

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

• Open an issue in distribution repository
• Email us at [email protected]

[1] faulty commit

A flaw was found in the /v2/_catalog endpoint in distribution/distribution, which accepts a parameter to control the maximum number of records returned (query string: n). This vulnerability allows a malicious user to submit an unreasonably large value for n, causing the allocation of a massive string array, possibly causing a denial of service through excessive use of memory.

Systems that run distribution built after a specific commit running on memory-restricted environments can suffer from denial of service by a crafted malicious /v2/_catalog API endpoint request.

Denail of service through excessive use of memory. (CVE-2023-2253)

These are all security issues fixed in the distribution-registry-2.8.2-1.1 package on the GA media of openSUSE Tumbleweed.

This update for docker-distribution fixes the following issues:

• CVE-2023-2253: Catalog Endpoint can lead to OOM by user input (bsc#1207705).

This update for distribution fixes the following issues:

• CVE-2023-2253: Fixed possible DoS via a crafted malicious /v2/_catalog API endpoint request (bsc#1207705).

This update for distribution fixes the following issues:

Update to verison 2.8.2:

• Revert registry/client: set Accept: identity header when getting layers
• Parse http forbidden as denied
• Fix CVE-2023-2253 runaway allocation on /v2/_catalog (bsc#1207705)
• Fix panic in inmemory driver
• update to go1.19.9
• Add code to handle pagination of parts. Fixes max layer size of 10GB bug
• Dockerfile: fix filenames of artifacts

It was discovered that Docker Registry incorrectly handled certain crafted input, A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2017-11468)

It was discovered that Docker Registry incorrectly handled certain crafted input. An attacker could possibly use this issue to cause a denial of service. (CVE-2023-2253)