GHSA-jr27-m4p2-rc6r Denial of Service in pyasn1 via Unbounded Recursion

• PyPI pyasn1: < 0.6.3 → fixed in 0.6.3

Summary The `pyasn1` library is vulnerable to a Denial of Service (DoS) attack caused by uncontrolled recursion when decoding ASN.1 data with deeply nested structures. An attacker can supply a crafted payload containing nested `SEQUENCE` (`0x30`) or `SET` (`0x31`) tags with Indefinite Length (`0x80`) markers. This forces the decoder to recursively call itself until the Python interpreter crashes with a `RecursionError` or consumes all available memory (OOM), crashing the host application. Details The vulnerability exists because the decoder iterates through the input stream and recursively calls `decodeFun` (the decoding callback) for every nested component found, without tracking or limiting the recursion depth. Vulnerable Code Locations: 1. `indefLenValueDecoder` (Line 998): ```for component in decodeFun(substrate, asn1Spec, allowEoo=True, options):``` This method handles indefinite-length constructed types. It sits inside a `while True` loop and recursively calls the decoder for every nested tag. 2. `valueDecoder` (Lines 786 and 907): ```for component in decodeFun(substrate, componentType, options):``` This method handles standard decoding when a schema is present. It contains two distinct recursive calls that lack depth checks: Line 786: Recursively decodes components of `SEQUENCE` or `SET` types. Line 907: Recursively decodes elements of `SEQUENCE OF` or `SET OF` types. 4. `_decodeComponentsSchemaless` (Line 661): ```for component in decodeFun(substrate, **options):``` This method handles decoding when no schema is provided. In all three cases, `decodeFun` is invoked without passing a `depth` parameter or checking against a global `MAX_ASN1_NESTING` limit. PoC ``` import sys from pyasn1.codec.ber import decoder sys.setrecursionlimit(100000) print("[*] Generating Recursion Bomb Payload...") depth = 50_000 chunk = b'\x30\x80' payload = chunk * depth print(f"[*] Payload size: {len(payload) / 1024:.2f} KB") print("[*] Triggering Decoder...") try: decoder.decode(payload) except RecursionError: print("[!] Crashed: Recursion Limit Hit") except MemoryError: print("[!] Crashed: Out of Memory") except Exception as e: print(f"[!] Crashed: {e}") ``` ``` [*] Payload size: 9.77 KB [*] Triggering Decoder... [!] Crashed: Recursion Limit Hit ``` Impact • This is an unhandled runtime exception that typically terminates the worker process or thread handling the request. This allows a remote attacker to trivially kill service workers with a small payload (<100KB), resulting in a Denial of Service. Furthermore, in environments where recursion limits are increased, this leads to server-wide memory exhaustion. • Service Crash: Any service using `pyasn1` to parse untrusted ASN.1 data (e.g., LDAP, SNMP, Kerberos, X.509 parsers) can be crashed remotely. • Resource Exhaustion: The attack consumes RAM linearly with the nesting depth. A small payload (<200KB) can consume hundreds of megabytes of RAM or exhaust the stack. Credits Vulnerability discovered by Kevin Tu of TMIR at ByteDance.