Hyperledger indy-node vulnerable to denial of serviceGHSA-x996-7qh9-7ff7
HIGHFix: hyperledger/indy-node@53a2a1bGHSA-x996-7qh9-7ff7 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in indy-node. The records list no fixed version yet; check the vendor advisory below and apply the mitigations in the meantime.
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 GHSA-x996-7qh9-7ff7.
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
indy-nodeReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
An attacker can max out the number of client connections allowed by the ledger that was deployed using guidance provided in the indy-node repository, leaving the ledger unable to be used for its intended purpose.
The ledger content will not be impacted by the attack, and the ledger will resume servicing valid client requests after the attack.
Mitigations
This attack exploits the trade-off between resilience and availability. Any protection against abusive client connections will also prevent the network being accessed by certain legitimate users. As a result, validator nodes must tune their firewall rules to ensure the right trade-off for their network's expected users. The guidance previously provided enabled a low-cost DDoS attack.
The guidance to network operators for the use of firewall rules in the deployment of Indy networks has been modified to better protect against denial of service attacks by increasing the cost and complexity in mounting such attacks.
The mitigation for this vulnerability is not in the Hyperledger Indy code per se, but rather in the individual deployments of Indy. The mitigations should be applied to all deployments of Indy, and are not related to a particular release.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Mirko Mollik at TrustCerts.de for finding and responsibly disclosing this issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | indy-node | all versions | No fix |
Affected Products
indy-nodelinuxfoundationDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for indy-node, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Remediation status
The records we use list no patched version of indy-node for GHSA-x996-7qh9-7ff7. Check the maintainer's advisory, and where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range.
Mitigate without a patch
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 GHSA-x996-7qh9-7ff7 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.