CVE-2019-3553 in C++ Facebook Thrift
Summary
by MITRE
C++ Facebook Thrift servers would not error upon receiving messages declaring containers of sizes larger than the payload. As a result, malicious clients could send short messages which would result in a large memory allocation, potentially leading to denial of service. This issue affects Facebook Thrift prior to v2020.02.03.00.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 04/11/2024
The vulnerability described in CVE-2019-3553 represents a critical memory allocation flaw within Facebook Thrift C++ server implementations that fundamentally compromises system stability and availability. This issue stems from the improper validation of container size declarations within Thrift protocol messages, creating a scenario where malicious actors can exploit the protocol's lenient parsing behavior to trigger excessive memory consumption. The vulnerability specifically targets the deserialization process where Thrift servers accept container size specifications without adequate bounds checking, allowing attackers to declare arbitrarily large container sizes within what are otherwise small payload messages.
The technical flaw manifests as a lack of input validation during the Thrift message processing pipeline, where container size parameters are directly used to allocate memory resources without proper sanitization or size constraints. This design weakness falls under the CWE-129 vulnerability category, which specifically addresses insufficient validation of length parameters in input processing. The vulnerability operates at the protocol level where Thrift's C++ implementation fails to enforce reasonable limits on container sizes, creating a scenario where a single malicious message can trigger massive memory allocation requests. When the server attempts to fulfill these requests, it allocates memory proportional to the declared container sizes, potentially exhausting available system resources and causing the service to become unresponsive or crash entirely.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple denial of service, as it can be exploited to consume system resources at a rate that renders the affected service unusable for legitimate users. Attackers can craft minimal network packets that declare enormous container sizes, causing the server to allocate memory that may exceed available system resources or cause memory fragmentation issues. This type of attack aligns with the ATT&CK technique T1499.004, which involves resource exhaustion attacks targeting availability. The vulnerability particularly affects systems running Facebook Thrift versions prior to v2020.02.03.00, making organizations with older implementations especially vulnerable to exploitation. The memory allocation behavior can also potentially lead to secondary effects such as system swapping, process termination by operating system memory managers, or cascading failures in dependent services that rely on the affected Thrift servers.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2019-3553 primarily focus on upgrading to the patched version of Facebook Thrift, specifically v2020.02.03.00 or later, which implements proper container size validation and bounds checking. Organizations should also implement network-level protections such as rate limiting and message size restrictions at proxies or firewalls to prevent malicious messages from reaching the vulnerable Thrift servers. Additional defensive measures include implementing memory monitoring and alerting systems that can detect unusual memory allocation patterns, configuring system-level memory limits for Thrift processes, and conducting thorough security testing of Thrift implementations to identify similar validation gaps in other protocols or libraries. The vulnerability serves as a reminder of the critical importance of input validation in protocol implementations and the potential for seemingly benign parsing operations to become significant security risks when proper bounds checking is omitted.