Summary
Denial of service of Minder Server with attacker-controlled REST endpoint
The Minder REST ingester is vulnerable to a denial of service attack via an attacker-controlled REST endpoint that can crash the Minder server.
The REST ingester allows users to interact with REST endpoints to fetch data for rule evaluation. When fetching data with the REST ingester, Minder sends a request to an endpoint and will use the data from the body of the response as the data to evaluate against a certain rule. Minder sends the request on these lines:
https://github.com/stacklok/minder/blob/daccbc12e364e2d407d56b87a13f7bb24cbdb074/internal/engine/ingester/rest/rest.go#L131-L139
… and parses the response body on these lines:
Minder creates the URL of the endpoint via templating on these lines:
As far as I can tell, at this stage in rule evaluation, users fully control the raw template and the params passed to the template via the RuleType type:
I have not seen anything that enforces users to only send requests to GitHub REST endpoints. If there is such a constraint, it limits the ease with which this vulnerability can be exploited, but it is still possible. If there is not such a constraint, it is easy to exploit this vuln.
When Minder parses the response from a remote endpoint, it reads the response entirely into memory on these lines:
and
If the response is sufficiently large, it can drain memory on the machine and crash the Minder server.
The attacker can control the remote REST endpoints that Minder sends requests to, and they can configure the remote REST endpoints to return responses with large bodies. They would then instruct Minder to send a request to their configured endpoint that would return the large response which would crash the Minder server.
Impact
Crafted input forces the application to consume excessive CPU, memory, or other resources, degrading or denying service. Typical impact: denial of service.
CVE-2024-35185 has a CVSS score of 5.3 (Medium). The vector is network-reachable, low 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 (0.0.49); 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-2024-35185? CVE-2024-35185 is a medium-severity uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability in github.com/stacklok/minder (go), affecting versions < 0.0.49. It is fixed in 0.0.49. Crafted input forces the application to consume excessive CPU, memory, or other resources, degrading or denying service.
- How severe is CVE-2024-35185? CVE-2024-35185 has a CVSS score of 5.3 (Medium). 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 github.com/stacklok/minder are affected by CVE-2024-35185? github.com/stacklok/minder (go) versions < 0.0.49 is affected.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2024-35185? Yes. CVE-2024-35185 is fixed in 0.0.49. Upgrade to this version or later.
- Is CVE-2024-35185 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2024-35185 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-2024-35185 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-2024-35185? Upgrade
github.com/stacklok/minderto 0.0.49 or later.