CVE-2024-23836 – CVE-2024-23836 is a resource exhaustion vulnera... (How to Fix)

Q: What is the severity of CVE-2024-23836?

CVE-2024-23836 has a CVSS score of 7.5 (HIGH). CVE-2024-23836 is a resource exhaustion vulnerability in Suricata where attackers can craft malicious network traffic to cause excessive CPU and memory consumption, leading to denial of service. This affects all Suricata deployments running versions before 6.0.16 or 7.0.3. Network administrators and security teams using Suricata for intrusion detection/prevention are impacted.

📋 TL;DR

CVE-2024-23836 is a resource exhaustion vulnerability in Suricata where attackers can craft malicious network traffic to cause excessive CPU and memory consumption, leading to denial of service. This affects all Suricata deployments running versions before 6.0.16 or 7.0.3. Network administrators and security teams using Suricata for intrusion detection/prevention are impacted.

💻 Affected Systems

Products:

Suricata IDS/IPS

Versions: All versions before 6.0.16 and 7.0.3

Operating Systems: All platforms running Suricata

Default Config Vulnerable: ⚠️ Yes

Notes: Affects the protocol app-layer parser; specific protocols not disclosed in public information.

📦 What is this software?

⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact

🔴

Worst Case

Complete denial of service where Suricata becomes unresponsive, dropping all traffic inspection and allowing malicious traffic to pass undetected.

🟠

Likely Case

Severe performance degradation causing packet loss, missed detections, and system instability requiring restart.

🟢

If Mitigated

Reduced performance impact with workarounds, but still vulnerable to targeted attacks.

🌐 Internet-Facing: HIGH - Attackers can send malicious traffic directly to internet-facing Suricata instances.

🏢 Internal Only: MEDIUM - Requires attacker to have internal network access or compromised internal host.

🎯 Exploit Status

Public PoC: ✅ No

Weaponized: UNKNOWN

Unauthenticated Exploit: ⚠️ Yes

Complexity: LOW - Crafting malicious network packets is straightforward for attackers.

No public exploit code available yet, but vulnerability details are public.

🛠️ Fix & Mitigation

✅ Official Fix

Patch Version: 6.0.16 or 7.0.3

Vendor Advisory: https://github.com/OISF/suricata/security/advisories

Restart Required: Yes

Instructions:

1. Backup current configuration. 2. Stop Suricata service. 3. Update to Suricata 6.0.16 or 7.0.3 using package manager or source compilation. 4. Restart Suricata service. 5. Verify version with 'suricata -V'.

🔧 Temporary Workarounds

Disable affected protocol parser

all

Disable the vulnerable protocol app-layer parser in Suricata YAML configuration.

Edit suricata.yaml and set app-layer protocol parser to 'disabled' for affected protocols

Reduce stream reassembly depth

all

Lower the stream.reassembly.depth value to reduce memory consumption impact.

Edit suricata.yaml and set 'stream.reassembly.depth' to a lower value (e.g., 1MB)

🧯 If You Can't Patch

Implement workarounds to disable affected protocol parsers and reduce stream.reassembly.depth
Deploy network segmentation to limit exposure and monitor for anomalous traffic patterns

🔍 How to Verify

Check if Vulnerable:

Check Suricata version with 'suricata -V' and compare to vulnerable versions (before 6.0.16 or 7.0.3).

Check Version:

suricata -V

Verify Fix Applied:

Confirm version is 6.0.16 or higher for 6.x branch, or 7.0.3 or higher for 7.x branch using 'suricata -V'.

📡 Detection & Monitoring

Log Indicators:

High CPU/memory usage alerts
Suricata process crashes or restarts
Performance degradation logs

Network Indicators:

Unusual protocol traffic patterns
High volume of crafted packets to Suricata interfaces

SIEM Query:

source="suricata" AND (cpu_usage>90 OR memory_usage>90) OR process="suricata" AND event="crash"

📊 Metadata

CVE ID: CVE-2024-23836

CVSS v3 Score: 7.5 (HIGH)

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CWE: CWE-770

Published: February 26, 2024

Last Updated: December 19, 2024

🔗 References

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