CVE-2021-43172 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-674 vulnerability in routinator. A fix is available for routinator — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Routinator infinite loop vulnerability
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
routinatorReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects crates.io packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
NLnet Labs Routinator prior to 0.10.2 happily processes a chain of RRDP repositories of infinite length causing it to never finish a validation run. In RPKI, a CA can choose the RRDP repository it wishes to publish its data in. By continuously generating a new child CA that only consists of another CA using a different RRDP repository, a malicious CA can create a chain of CAs of de-facto infinite length. Routinator prior to version 0.10.2 did not contain a limit on the length of such a chain and will therefore continue to process this chain forever. As a result, the validation run will never finish, leading to Routinator continuing to serve the old data set or, if in the initial validation run directly after starting, never serve any data at all.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | routinator | all versions | 0.10.2cargo update -p routinator --precise 0.10.2 |
Affected Products
routinatornlnetlabsDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for routinator, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update routinator to 0.10.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-43172 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2021-43172 in your dependencies?
Find it across crates.io, including transitive dependencies.