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DDOS Vulnerability on GraphQL due to lack of protection against recursive queries

High
GuySartorelli published GHSA-v23w-pppm-jh66 Oct 16, 2023

Package

composer silverstripe/graphql (Composer)

Affected versions

>= 3.0.0, < 3.8.2
>= 4.0.0, < 4.1.3
>= 4.2.0, < 4.2.5
>= 4.3.0, < 4.3.4
>= 5.0.0, < 5.0.3

Patched versions

3.8.2
4.1.3
4.2.5
4.3.4
5.0.3

Description

Impact

An attacker could use a recursive graphql query to execute a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDOS attack) against a website. This mostly affects websites with publicly exposed graphql schemas.

If your Silverstripe CMS project does not expose a public facing graphql schema, a user account is required to trigger the DDOS attack. If your site is hosted behind a content delivery network (CDN), such as Imperva or CloudFlare, this may further mitigate the risk.

The fix includes some new configuration options which you might want to tweak for your project, based on your own requirements. See the documentation in the references for details.

Patches

Patched in 3.8.2, 4.1.3, 4.2.5, 4.3.4, 5.0.3

References

Reported by

Jason Nguyen from phew (https://phew.co.nz/)

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CVE ID

CVE-2023-40180

Weaknesses