A vulnerability was found in F5 BIG-IP up to 11.6.1/11.6.2/12.1.3.1/13.0.0 (Firewall Software). It has been declared as problematic. Affected by this vulnerability is some unknown functionality of the component TCP DNS Profile Hanlder. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a resource consumption vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-400. The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource, thereby enabling an actor to influence the amount of resources consumed, eventually leading to the exhaustion of available resources. As an impact it is known to affect availability. The summary by CVE is:

In some circumstances, on F5 BIG-IP systems running 13.0.0, 12.1.0 - 12.1.3.1, any 11.6.x or 11.5.x release, or 11.2.1, TCP DNS profile allows excessive buffering due to lack of flow control.

The bug was discovered 02/28/2018. The weakness was presented 03/01/2018 (Website). It is possible to read the advisory at support.f5.com. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2018-5501 since 01/12/2018. The attack can be launched remotely. The exploitation doesn't need any form of authentication. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available. The pricing for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 02/16/2023). The attack technique deployed by this issue is T1499 according to MITRE ATT&CK.

The vulnerability was handled as a non-public zero-day exploit for at least 1 days. During that time the estimated underground price was around $5k-$25k. The commercial vulnerability scanner Qualys is able to test this issue with plugin 370832 (F5 BIG-IP ASM DNS TCP Denial of Service Vulnerability (K44200194)).

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at SecurityFocus (BID 103211†). See VDB-113982 for similar entry. Several companies clearly confirm that VulDB is the primary source for best vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Type

• Firewall Software

Vendor

• F5

Name

• BIG-IP

Version

• 11.6.0
• 11.6.1
• 11.6.2
• 12.1.3.0
• 12.1.3.1
• 13.0

License

• commercial

CPE 2.3info

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CPE 2.2info

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