CVE-2021-41168 MEDIUM

CVE-2021-41168: Hash-Collision Denial-of-Service Vulnerability in snudown

Vendor Reddit
Product snudown
Weakness CWE-400
Published October 21, 2021
Last update August 4, 2024

CVSS base score

6.5/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required Low
User interaction None
Confidentiality None
Integrity None

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

What the vulnerability does

01Description

Snudown is a reddit-specific fork of the Sundown Markdown parser used by GitHub, with Python integration added. In affected versions snudown was found to be vulnerable to denial of service attacks to its reference table implementation. References written in markdown ` [reference_name]: https://www.example.com` are inserted into a hash table which was found to have a weak hash function, meaning that an attacker can reliably generate a large number of collisions for it. This makes the hash table vulnerable to a hash-collision DoS attack, a type of algorithmic complexity attack. Further the hash table allowed for duplicate entries resulting in long retrieval times. Proofs of concept and further discussion of the hash collision issue are discussed on the snudown GHSA(https://github.com/reddit/snudown/security/advisories/GHSA-6gvv-9q92-w5f6). Users are advised to update to version 1.7.0.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

October 21, 2021 CVE published
August 4, 2024 Record updated