CVE-2024-38316 in Aspera Shares
Summary
by MITRE • 02/06/2025
IBM Aspera Shares 1.9.0 through 1.10.0 PL6 does not properly rate limit the frequency that an authenticated user can send emails, which could result in email flooding or a denial of service.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 02/22/2025
IBM Aspera Shares versions 1.9.0 through 1.10.0 PL6 contain a critical security vulnerability that allows authenticated users to exploit improper rate limiting mechanisms within the email functionality. This flaw enables malicious actors to flood the system with excessive email requests, potentially leading to denial of service conditions that disrupt legitimate user access and system operations. The vulnerability resides in the application's inability to effectively monitor and restrict the frequency of email transmission attempts from authenticated accounts, creating an avenue for abuse that can overwhelm system resources and degrade service availability. This issue directly violates security principles related to resource management and access control, as it allows users to consume disproportionate system resources through legitimate authenticated sessions.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from inadequate rate limiting controls within the email sending functionality of the Aspera Shares platform. When authenticated users submit email requests, the system fails to enforce appropriate temporal constraints or request volume limits that would normally prevent excessive usage patterns. This absence of proper rate limiting creates a condition where malicious users can rapidly send multiple email notifications without sufficient throttling mechanisms to detect or prevent abusive behavior. The flaw operates at the application layer, specifically targeting the email service component that handles user-initiated notifications, making it particularly dangerous as it leverages legitimate user credentials to execute denial of service attacks.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability presents significant risks to organizations relying on IBM Aspera Shares for file transfer and collaboration services. The potential for email flooding can result in system performance degradation, service unavailability, and disruption of legitimate business operations. Attackers could exploit this weakness to exhaust system resources, prevent authorized users from sending legitimate emails, or create cascading failures that affect broader network services. The vulnerability affects organizations that depend on the platform's email notification features, potentially compromising both availability and integrity of their communication systems. Security teams would need to monitor for unusual email traffic patterns and implement workarounds while waiting for vendor patches.
Organizations should implement immediate mitigations including network-level rate limiting controls, monitoring for abnormal email sending patterns, and temporary restrictions on email functionality until official patches are deployed. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-770, which addresses allocation of resources without proper limits or controls, and corresponds to ATT&CK technique T1499.004 for denial of service through resource exhaustion. System administrators should consider implementing additional logging and alerting mechanisms to detect potential abuse patterns, while also reviewing access controls to ensure that only authorized users can trigger email notifications. The remediation approach should include applying the latest security patches from IBM as soon as they become available, while maintaining visibility into email traffic patterns to identify and respond to any ongoing exploitation attempts. This vulnerability demonstrates the critical importance of implementing proper rate limiting controls in web applications and highlights the need for comprehensive security testing of all user-facing functionality.