CVE-2022-23486 — libp2p
HIGHCVE-2022-23486 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in libp2p. A fix is available for libp2p — see the affected versions and patch details below.
libp2p-rust denial of service vulnerability from lack of resource management
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-23486.
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
libp2pReal-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
Impact
An attacker node can cause a victim node to allocate a large number of small memory chunks, which can ultimately lead to the victim’s process running out of memory and thus getting killed by its operating system. When executed continuously, this can lead to a denial of service attack, especially relevant on a larger scale when run against more than one node of a libp2p based network.
Details
In the original version of the attack, the malicious node would continuously open new streams on a single connection using a stream multiplexer that doesn’t provide sufficient back pressure (mplex or yamux). While allocations per stream might be considered small, they multiply with the number of streams and connections. It is easy to defend against this one attack, e.g. by setting a strict per connection stream limit and connection limit. But there are other variations of this attack, e.g. causing memory allocations by sending partial payloads on various protocol levels, forcing the victim to buffer the partial payload for a period of time or by tricking the victim into pre-allocating buffers for messages which are never sent by the attacker.
Patches
Users are advised to upgrade to libp2p v0.45.1 or above.
References
Please see our DoS Mitigation page for more information on how to incorporate mitigation strategies, monitor your application, and respond to attacks: https://docs.libp2p.io/reference/dos-mitigation/.
Please see the related disclosure for go-libp2p: https://github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p/security/advisories/GHSA-j7qp-mfxf-8xjw and js-libp2p: https://github.com/libp2p/js-libp2p/security/advisories/GHSA-f44q-634c-jvwv
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, please email us at [email protected].
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | libp2p | all versions | 0.45.1cargo update -p libp2p --precise 0.45.1 |
Affected Products
libp2pprotocolDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for libp2p, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update libp2p to 0.45.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-23486 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-23486 in your dependencies?
Find it across crates.io, including transitive dependencies.