CVE-2023-50248 in CKAN
Summary
by MITRE • 12/13/2023
CKAN is an open-source data management system for powering data hubs and data portals. Starting in version 2.0.0 and prior to versions 2.9.10 and 2.10.3, when submitting a POST request to the `/dataset/new` endpoint (including either the auth cookie or the `Authorization` header) with a specially-crafted field, an attacker can create an out-of-memory error in the hosting server. To trigger this error, the attacker need to have permissions to create or edit datasets. This vulnerability has been patched in CKAN 2.10.3 and 2.9.10.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 01/10/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2023-50248 affects CKAN, an open-source data management system widely used for creating data hubs and portals. This issue represents a denial of service condition that can be exploited by authenticated attackers who possess dataset creation or editing permissions. The vulnerability exists in CKAN versions 2.0.0 through 2.9.9 and 2.10.2, making it a significant concern for organizations relying on these older versions. The flaw specifically targets the `/dataset/new` endpoint which is fundamental to dataset creation within the CKAN platform.
The technical mechanism behind this vulnerability involves a specially crafted field within POST requests submitted to the dataset creation endpoint. When an attacker constructs a malicious request containing specific field values, the CKAN application processes this input in a manner that consumes excessive memory resources. This memory consumption pattern leads to an out-of-memory error that effectively crashes or renders the hosting server unavailable. The vulnerability requires authentication since attackers must possess the necessary permissions to create or edit datasets, which aligns with standard access control principles and represents a privilege escalation scenario within the application's security model.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple service disruption as it can be exploited to systematically degrade the availability of data portal services. Organizations relying on CKAN for critical data infrastructure may experience complete service unavailability during exploitation attempts, potentially affecting data publishing workflows, user access, and overall platform reliability. The vulnerability's presence in multiple version streams (2.9.x and 2.10.x) indicates a widespread exposure across different CKAN deployments, making it particularly concerning for large organizations maintaining multiple CKAN instances. The out-of-memory error can also potentially cause cascading failures in systems where CKAN is integrated with other services, affecting broader IT infrastructure availability.
Security practitioners should prioritize updating affected CKAN installations to versions 2.9.10 or 2.10.3, which contain the necessary patches to prevent this memory exhaustion attack. The vulnerability demonstrates the importance of input validation and resource management in web applications, particularly those handling user-submitted data. Organizations should also implement monitoring for unusual memory consumption patterns and consider implementing rate limiting on dataset creation endpoints as additional defensive measures. From a compliance perspective, this vulnerability relates to CWE-400 which addresses unspecified resource exhaustion, and aligns with ATT&CK technique T1499.004 for network denial of service attacks. The fix implemented in patched versions addresses the root cause by properly validating and sanitizing input parameters to prevent excessive memory allocation during dataset creation processes.