Early Access — Mondoo Vulnerability Intelligence is currently in preview.
The product contains an assert() or similar statement that can be triggered by an attacker, which leads to an application exit or other behavior that is more severe than necessary.
While assertion is good for catching logic errors and reducing the chances of reaching more serious vulnerability conditions, it can still lead to a denial of service.
For example, if a server handles multiple simultaneous connections, and an assert() occurs in one single connection that causes all other connections to be dropped, this is a reachable assertion that leads to a denial of service.
Make sensitive open/close operation non reachable by directly user-controlled data (e.g. open/close resources)
Perform input validation on user data.
An attacker that can trigger an assert statement can still lead to a denial of service if the relevant code can be triggered by an attacker, and if the scope of the assert() extends beyond the attacker's own session.
Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)
CVE-2024-8768API server for LLM library can crash when provided an empty prompt, which triggers a reachable assertion
CVE-2023-49286Chain: function in web caching proxy does not correctly check a return value (CWE-253) leading to a reachable assertion (CWE-617)
CVE-2006-6767FTP server allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (daemon abort) via crafted commands which trigger an assertion failure.
CVE-2006-6811Chat client allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a long message string when connecting to a server, which causes an assertion failure.
CVE-2006-5779Product allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (daemon crash) via LDAP BIND requests with long authcid names, which triggers an assertion failure.