CVE-2022-23492 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p. A fix is available for github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p — see the affected versions and patch details below.
go-libp2p 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-2022-23492.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2022-23492 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 378,567 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
github.com/libp2p/go-libp2pReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
Versions older than v0.18.0 of go-libp2p are vulnerable to targeted resource exhaustion attacks. These attacks target libp2p’s connection, stream, peer, and memory management. An attacker can cause the allocation of large amounts of memory, ultimately leading to the process getting killed by the host’s operating system. While a connection manager tasked with keeping the number of connections within manageable limits has been part of go-libp2p, this component was designed to handle the regular churn of peers, not a targeted resource exhaustion attack.
In the original version of the attack, the malicious node would continue opening new streams on a stream multiplexer that doesn’t provide sufficient back pressure (yamux or mplex). It is easy to defend against this one attack, but there are countless variations of this attack:
- Opening streams and causing a non-trivial memory allocation (e.g., for multistream or protobuf parsing)
- Creating a lot of sybil nodes and opening new connections across nodes
Patches (What to do as a go-libp2p consumer:)
-
Update your go-libp2p dependency to go-libp2p v0.18.0 or greater (current version as of publish date is v0.24.0.)
- Note: It's recommend that you update to
v0.21.0onwards as you’ll get some useful functionality that will help in production environments like better metrics around resource usage, Grafana dashboards around resource usage, allow list support, and default autoscaling limits. Please see the v0.21.0 release notes for more info.)
- Note: It's recommend that you update to
-
Determine appropriate limits for your application - go-libp2p sets up a resource manager with the default limits if none are provided. For default definitions please see limits_defaults.go. These limits are also set to automatically scale, this is done using the AutoScale method of the ScalingLimitConfig. We recommend you tune your limits as described here.
-
Configure your node to be attack resilient. See how to respond to an attack and identify misbehaving peers here. Then setup automatic blocking with fail2ban using canonical libp2p log lines: guide on how to do so here.
Examples
- Lotus’ integration can be found in https://github.com/filecoin-project/lotus/blob/master/node/modules/lp2p/rcmgr.go. Lotus reads user-configured resource limits from a limits.json file into the root directory. This allows users to share their resource manager configuration independent of any other configurations.
- Kubo’s (formerly go-ipfs) integration can be found in https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/blob/master/core/node/libp2p/rcmgr.go. Kubo reads the limits from the IPFS config file.
Note: go-libp2p still implements the connection manager mentioned above. The connection manager is a component independent of the resource manager, which aims to keep the number of libp2p connections between a low and a high watermark. When modifying connection limits, it’s advantageous to keep the configuration of these components consistent, i.e., when setting a limit of N concurrent connections in the resource manager, the high watermark should be at most (and ideally slightly less) than N.
Workarounds
Although there are no workarounds within go-libp2p, some range of attacks can be mitigated using OS tools (like manually blocking malicious peers using iptables or ufw ) or making use of a load balancer in front of libp2p nodes.
However these require direct action & responsibility on your part and are no substitutes for upgrading go-libp2p. Therefore, we highly recommend upgrading your go-libp2p version for the way it enables tighter scoped limits and provides visibility into and easier reasoning about go-libp2p resource utilization.
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 rust-libp2p: https://github.com/libp2p/rust-libp2p/security/advisories/GHSA-jvgw-gccv-q5p8 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 email us at [email protected]
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p | all versions | 0.18.0go get github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p@v0.18.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p to 0.18.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-23492 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.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2022-23492 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2022-23492. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-23492 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2022-23492 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.