CVE-2013-0247 in Grizzly
Summary
by MITRE
OpenStack Keystone Essex 2012.1.3 and earlier, Folsom 2012.2.3 and earlier, and Grizzly grizzly-2 and earlier allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (disk consumption) via many invalid token requests that trigger excessive generation of log entries.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/29/2021
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2013-0247 affects OpenStack Keystone versions up to and including Essex 2012.1.3, Folsom 2012.2.3, and Grizzly grizzly-2, representing a significant denial of service weakness that can be exploited by remote attackers to consume system resources. This vulnerability specifically targets the token validation mechanism within Keystone, which serves as the identity service for OpenStack environments. The flaw enables malicious actors to flood the system with invalid token requests, causing an exponential increase in log file generation that ultimately leads to disk space exhaustion.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from insufficient input validation and logging mechanisms within the Keystone service. When invalid authentication tokens are submitted to the system, the service processes these requests through its token validation routine without adequate rate limiting or resource consumption controls. Each invalid token request triggers extensive logging operations that generate substantial log entries, with the system failing to implement proper throttling or deduplication mechanisms. This design flaw allows attackers to continuously submit malformed tokens, creating a continuous stream of log entries that rapidly consume available disk space.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability presents a critical risk to cloud infrastructure deployments that rely on OpenStack Keystone for identity management. The denial of service condition occurs through disk consumption rather than traditional network or processing resource exhaustion, making it particularly insidious as it can silently degrade system performance without immediate detection. Organizations using affected Keystone versions face potential service disruption, application unavailability, and increased operational overhead as system administrators must constantly monitor and manage disk space allocation. The vulnerability can be exploited with minimal resources and technical expertise, making it an attractive target for attackers seeking to disrupt cloud services.
The impact of this vulnerability aligns with CWE-400, which addresses "Uncontrolled Resource Consumption," and can be mapped to ATT&CK technique T1499.004, "File System Wipe," as the mechanism involves exhausting disk resources through log file generation. Organizations should implement immediate mitigations including log rotation policies with size limits, rate limiting on authentication requests, and monitoring thresholds for disk space utilization. The recommended approach involves configuring log management systems to automatically rotate logs based on size or time intervals, implementing authentication rate limiting mechanisms, and deploying intrusion detection systems to identify and block suspicious request patterns. Upgrading to patched versions of OpenStack Keystone represents the most effective long-term solution, as subsequent releases include improved logging controls and resource management mechanisms that prevent this specific class of denial of service attacks from compromising system integrity.