CVE-2024-23323 in envoy
Summary
by MITRE • 02/10/2024
Envoy is a high-performance edge/middle/service proxy. The regex expression is compiled for every request and can result in high CPU usage and increased request latency when multiple routes are configured with such matchers. This issue has been addressed in released 1.29.1, 1.28.1, 1.27.3, and 1.26.7. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/03/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2024-23323 affects Envoy, a high-performance edge/middle/service proxy widely used in modern microservices architectures and cloud-native environments. This proxy serves as a critical component in service mesh deployments, API gateways, and edge computing scenarios where efficient request routing and processing are paramount. The flaw resides in how Envoy handles regular expression compilation within route matching configurations, creating a performance degradation issue that impacts system throughput and response times across all supported versions prior to the patched releases.
The technical root cause of this vulnerability stems from the repeated compilation of regular expressions for each incoming request when multiple routes are configured with regex matchers. This design pattern leads to significant computational overhead as the proxy must repeatedly parse and compile the same regular expression patterns during request processing. The issue manifests as elevated cpu utilization and increased request latency, particularly when the proxy handles high volumes of traffic with complex routing rules. This behavior represents a classic performance degradation vulnerability that can be exploited to cause denial of service conditions through resource exhaustion.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability poses substantial risks to production environments where Envoy serves as a critical traffic management component. The increased cpu usage directly impacts the proxy's ability to handle concurrent requests efficiently, potentially leading to cascading failures in service mesh architectures where multiple services depend on the proxy for routing decisions. The latency increases affect end-user experience and can trigger alerts in monitoring systems, while the resource consumption patterns may indicate potential security issues to attackers seeking to exploit system resources for malicious purposes. Organizations using Envoy in production environments may experience degraded service quality and increased operational costs due to the performance impact.
The vulnerability has been addressed through patched releases including versions 1.29.1, 1.28.1, 1.27.3, and 1.26.7, which implement optimizations to reduce the frequency of regex compilation operations. These patches typically involve caching compiled regular expressions or implementing more efficient compilation strategies to prevent the repeated overhead during request processing. Security teams should prioritize upgrading affected systems to the latest patched versions to eliminate this performance degradation. The lack of known workarounds means organizations cannot mitigate this issue through configuration changes or temporary fixes, making the upgrade process critical for maintaining system performance and reliability. This vulnerability aligns with CWE-362, which describes concurrent execution using shared resource vulnerabilities, and may be categorized under ATT&CK technique T1499.001 for resource exhaustion attacks targeting system performance. Organizations should implement comprehensive testing procedures before deploying these patches in production environments to ensure compatibility with existing routing configurations and avoid unexpected service disruptions.