Summary
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption in Indy Node
Indy Node has a bug in TAA handling code. The current primary can be crashed with a malformed transaction from a client, which leads to a view change. Repeated rapid view changes have the potential of bringing down the network.
Discovery
On May 18, Evernym's monitoring of Sovrin StagingNet showed a report of StagingNet losing sufficient consensus to validate write transactions. The problem resolved itself within a few minutes. On May 20th we saw the alert multiple times, and we began analyzing the logs of our steward node. On May 21st we continued to see the alerts with increasing frequency.
It appears that someone is unknowingly sending a malformed transaction, and retrying when the transaction fails. The cause of the errors appear to be the TAA acceptance.
Proposed actions
- Reproduce problem in integration tests and create a fix
- Do a hotfix release branching from last stable (current master have some things merged that are too risky)
- Upgrade BuilderNet, StagingNet and MainNet as soon as possible
- Improve testing strategy on Indy Node to reduce probability of such bugs
Notes
- The journalctl logs also show an out-of-memory problem on the Australia node. We need to evaluate if this should be raised as a separate issue.
Impact
Crafted input forces the application to consume excessive CPU, memory, or other resources, degrading or denying service. Typical impact: denial of service.
CVE-2020-11090 has a CVSS score of 7.5 (Critical). The vector is network-reachable, no privileges required, and no user interaction. A CVSS score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether this affects your application depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable in your environment. A fixed version is available (1.12.3); upgrading removes the vulnerable code path.
Affected versions
Security releases
Kodem intelligence
Severity tells you how bad this could be in the worst case. It does not tell you whether you are exposed. Exploitability and impact are functions of runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A vulnerable package can sit in your dependency tree and never run.
Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter. Kodem's runtime-powered SCA identifies whether this CVE is reachable in your applications.
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Frequently Asked Questions
- What is CVE-2020-11090? CVE-2020-11090 is a critical-severity uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability in indy-node (pip), affecting versions = 1.12.2. It is fixed in 1.12.3. Crafted input forces the application to consume excessive CPU, memory, or other resources, degrading or denying service.
- How severe is CVE-2020-11090? CVE-2020-11090 has a CVSS score of 7.5 (Critical). This score reflects the worst-case severity of the vulnerability, not your specific exposure. Whether it represents real risk in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable.
- Which versions of indy-node are affected by CVE-2020-11090? indy-node (pip) versions = 1.12.2 is affected.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2020-11090? Yes. CVE-2020-11090 is fixed in 1.12.3. Upgrade to this version or later.
- Is CVE-2020-11090 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2020-11090 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
- What actually determines whether CVE-2020-11090 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
- How do I fix CVE-2020-11090? Upgrade
indy-nodeto 1.12.3 or later.