Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in elixir-plug plug_cowboy allows unauthenticated remote denial of service via atom table exhaustion. Plug.Cowboy.Conn.conn/1 in lib/plug/cowboy/conn.ex calls String.to_atom/1 on the value returned by :cowboy_req.scheme/1. For HTTP/2 connections, cowlib passes the client-supplied :scheme pseudo-header value through verbatim without validation. Each unique value permanently allocates a new entry in the BEAM atom table. Since atoms are never garbage-collected and the atom table has a fixed limit (default 1,048,576), an unauthenticated attacker can exhaust the table by sending HTTP/2 requests with unique :scheme values, causing the Erlang VM to abort with system_limit and taking down the entire node. This vulnerability does not affect HTTP/1.1, where cowboy derives the scheme from the listener type rather than from a client-supplied header. This issue affects plug_cowboy: from 2.0.0 before 2.8.1.
| Métrique | Valeur | Interprétation |
|---|---|---|
|
AV (Vecteur d'Attaque)
Attack Vector
|
Network (N)
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Exploit possible à distance via réseau (HTTP, API, etc.) |
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AC (Complexité d'Attaque)
Attack Complexity
|
Low (L)
|
Peu de conditions requises pour exploiter |
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PR (Privilèges Requis)
Privileges Required
|
None (N)
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Aucune authentification requise |
|
UI (Interaction Utilisateur)
User Interaction
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None (N)
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Aucune interaction utilisateur nécessaire |
|
S (Périmètre)
Scope
|
Unchanged (U)
|
Impact reste dans le périmètre du composant compromis |
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C (Impact Confidentialité)
Confidentiality Impact
|
None (N)
|
Aucune divulgation d'informations |
|
I (Impact Intégrité)
Integrity Impact
|
None (N)
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Aucune modification de données possible |
|
A (Impact Disponibilité)
Availability Impact
|
High (H)
|
Interruption totale du service possible |
Plug.Cowboy vulnerable to unauthenticated remote DoS via HTTP/2 `:scheme` atom-table exhaustion
Atom table exhaustion via HTTP/2 :scheme pseudo-header in plug_cowboy