CVE-2023-6180 — The tokio-boring library in version 4

The tokio-boring library in version 4.0.0 is affected by a memory leak issue that can lead to excessive resource consumption and potential DoS by resource exhaustion. The set_ex_data function used by the library did not deallocate memory used by pre-existing data in memory each t

01What is this vulnerability?

The tokio-boring library in version 4.0.0 is affected by a memory leak issue that can lead to excessive resource consumption and potential DoS by resource exhaustion. The set_ex_data function used by the library did not deallocate memory used by pre-existing data in memory each time after completing a TLS connection causing the program to consume more resources with each new connection.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
Cloudflare	tokio	boring — 4.0.0

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2023-12-05T15:02:40.007Z
• Last modified: 2024-08-02T08:21:17.825Z

09References

• github.com — https://github.com/cloudflare/boring/security/advisories/GHSA-pjrj-h4fg-6gm4