Denial of Service (DoS) Affecting github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk package, versions <0.46.0

github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk is a framework for building blockchain applications.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS). An issue has been identified on unsupported versions of Cosmovisor which may result in a Denial of Service or Remote Code Execution path depending on configuration for a node or validator using the vulnerable version to manage their node.

Note:

If a validator is utilizing an affected version of Cosmovisor with DAEMON_ALLOW_DOWNLOAD_BINARIES set to true, a non-default configuration, it may be possible for an attacker to trigger a Remote Code Execution path as well on the host.

IoC

Running the following command will output whether your cosmovisor version is vulnerable to this issue or not.

Vulnerable to this issue:

strings ./cosmovisor | grep -q "NEEDED at" && echo "vulnerable" || echo "NOT vulnerable"

vulnerable

NOT vulnerable to this issue:

strings ./cosmovisor_new | grep -q "NEEDED at" && echo "vulnerable" || echo "NOT vulnerable"

NOT vulnerable

Denial of Service (DoS) describes a family of attacks, all aimed at making a system inaccessible to its intended and legitimate users.

Unlike other vulnerabilities, DoS attacks usually do not aim at breaching security. Rather, they are focused on making websites and services unavailable to genuine users resulting in downtime.

One popular Denial of Service vulnerability is DDoS (a Distributed Denial of Service), an attack that attempts to clog network pipes to the system by generating a large volume of traffic from many machines.

When it comes to open source libraries, DoS vulnerabilities allow attackers to trigger such a crash or crippling of the service by using a flaw either in the application code or from the use of open source libraries.

Two common types of DoS vulnerabilities:

• High CPU/Memory Consumption- An attacker sending crafted requests that could cause the system to take a disproportionate amount of time to process. For example, commons-fileupload:commons-fileupload.

• Crash - An attacker sending crafted requests that could cause the system to crash. For Example, npm ws package

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