Snyk Vuln Report: DoS through mem

[corpetty]

Bug Report

Summary

Severity: 5.1 (Medium Severity)
Snyk.io has found a vulnerability in embark:

• Vulnerable module: mem
• Introduced through: remix-tests@0.1.1, ganache-cli@6.2.3 and others

Detailed paths and remediation

• Introduced through: embark@4.0.0-beta.0 › remix-tests@0.1.1 › remix-solidity@0.3.1 › solc@0.5.4 › yargs@11.1.0 › os-locale@2.1.0 › mem@1.1.0
  • Remediation: No remediation path available.
• Introduced through: embark@4.0.0-beta.0 › remix-tests@0.1.1 › remix-lib@0.4.1 › solc@0.5.4 › yargs@11.1.0 › os-locale@2.1.0 › mem@1.1.0
  • Remediation: No remediation path available.
• Introduced through: embark@4.0.0-beta.0 › remix-tests@0.1.1 › remix-solidity@0.3.1 › remix-lib@0.4.1 › solc@0.5.4 › yargs@11.1.0 › os-locale@2.1.0 › mem@1.1.0
  • Remediation: No remediation path available.
• Introduced through: embark@4.0.0-beta.0 › remix-tests@0.1.1 › remix-simulator@0.1.1 › remix-lib@0.4.1 › solc@0.5.4 › yargs@11.1.0 › os-locale@2.1.0 › mem@1.1.0
  • Remediation: No remediation path available.
• Introduced through: embark@4.0.0-beta.0 › ganache-cli@6.2.3 › yargs@11.1.0 › os-locale@2.1.0 › mem@1.1.0
  • Remediation: No remediation path available.
• Introduced through: embark@4.0.0-beta.0 › solc@0.5.0 › yargs@11.1.0 › os-locale@2.1.0 › mem@1.1.0
  • Remediation: No remediation path available.
• Introduced through: embark@4.0.0-beta.0 › os-locale@2.1.0 › mem@1.1.0
  • Remediation: Upgrade to os-locale@3.0.1.

Vulnerable functions

index.module.exports.memoized.setData()

Overview

mem is an optimization used to speed up consecutive function calls by caching the result of calls with identical input.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS). Old results were deleted from the cache and could cause a memory leak.

More about this issue

details

Denial of Service (DoS) describes a family of attacks, all aimed at making a system inaccessible to its intended and legitimate users.

Unlike other vulnerabilities, DoS attacks usually do not aim at breaching security. Rather, they are focused on making websites and services unavailable to genuine users resulting in downtime.

One popular Denial of Service vulnerability is DDoS (a Distributed Denial of Service), an attack that attempts to clog network pipes to the system by generating a large volume of traffic from many machines.

When it comes to open source libraries, DoS vulnerabilities allow attackers to trigger such a crash or crippling of the service by using a flaw either in the application code or from the use of open source libraries.

Two common types of DoS vulnerabilities:

• High CPU/Memory Consumption- An attacker sending crafted requests that could cause the system to take a disproportionate amount of time to process. For example, commons-fileupload:commons-fileupload.
• Crash - An attacker sending crafted requests that could cause the system to crash. For Example, npm ws package

Remediation

Upgrade mem to version 4.0.0 or higher.

GH issue