CVE-2021-21274
Denial of service attack via .well-known lookups
In short
A malicious Matrix server can trick other servers into downloading a huge file when looking up its configuration, consuming excessive resources and causing service disruption. This affects any server that accepts connections from untrusted servers.
Technical detail
Synapse versions before 1.25.0 fail to enforce size limits on .well-known endpoint responses during federation discovery. An attacker controlling a federated homeserver can redirect the .well-known lookup to a large file, causing resource exhaustion on the requesting server. Mitigation includes upgrading to 1.25.0 or restricting federation via domain whitelist.
Summary generated and translated by AI from the official description.
Synapse is a Matrix reference homeserver written in python (pypi package matrix-synapse). Matrix is an ecosystem for open federated Instant Messaging and VoIP. In Synapse before version 1.25.0, a malicious homeserver could redirect requests to their .well-known file to a large file. This can lead to a denial of service attack where homeservers will consume significantly more resources when requesting the .well-known file of a malicious homeserver. This affects any server which accepts federation requests from untrusted servers. Issue is resolved in version 1.25.0. As a workaround the `federation_domain_whitelist` setting can be used to restrict the homeservers communicated with over federation.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Affected products
matrix-org · synapseWant to know if your infrastructure is exposed to this?
Talk to TrueHacking →References
https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/commit/ff5c4da1289cb5e097902b3e55b771be342c29d6https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/8950https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/releases/tag/v1.25.0https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/security/advisories/GHSA-2hwx-mjrm-v3g8https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TNNAJOZNMVMXM6AS7RFFKB4QLUJ4IFEY/