Uncontrolled Resource Consumption in Indy Node
Summary
Indy Node has a bug in TAA handling code. The current primary can be crashed with a malformed transaction from a client, which leads to a view change. Repeated rapid view changes have the potential of bringing down the network.
Discovery
On May 18, Evernym's monitoring of Sovrin StagingNet showed a report of StagingNet losing sufficient consensus to validate write transactions. The problem resolved itself within a few minutes. On May 20th we saw the alert multiple times, and we began analyzing the logs of our steward node. On May 21st we continued to see the alerts with increasing frequency.
It appears that someone is unknowingly sending a malformed transaction, and retrying when the transaction fails. The cause of the errors appear to be the TAA acceptance.
Proposed actions
- Reproduce problem in integration tests and create a fix
- Do a hotfix release branching from last stable (current master have some things merged that are too risky)
- Upgrade BuilderNet, StagingNet and MainNet as soon as possible
- Improve testing strategy on Indy Node to reduce probability of such bugs
Notes
- The journalctl logs also show an out-of-memory problem on the Australia node. We need to evaluate if this should be raised as a separate issue.
Affected software
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| Platform | Package | Vulnerable versions | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Python (PyPI) | indy-node | >= 1.12.2, < 1.12.3 | 1.12.3 |
References
- https://pypi.org/project/indy-node/1.12.3/
- https://github.com/hyperledger/indy-node/security/advisories/GHSA-3gw4-m5w7-v89c
- https://github.com/hyperledger/indy-node/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#1123
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-11090
- https://github.com/hyperledger/indy-node
- https://github.com/pypa/advisory-database/tree/main/vulns/indy-node/PYSEC-2020-47.yaml
- https://pypi.org/project/indy-node/1.12.3
- CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H- Weakness (CWE)
CWE-400- Platform
- Python (PyPI)
- Package
indy-node- Disclosed
- 11.06.2020
- Updated
- 11.10.2026 15:17
Sources and licenses
OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - PYSEC-2020-47 - PyPA Advisory Database; CC BY 4.0
OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-3gw4-m5w7-v89c - CC BY 4.0
Vulnerability history: indy-node
All published vulnerabilities of this package (Python (PyPI)), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.
- Total entries
- 4
- First → latest
- 06.2020 09.2022
- Without a fix
- 0
- Exploited in attacks
- 0
Severity breakdown
- Critical 1
- High 3
Disclosures per year
- 2020: 2
- 2021: 0
- 2022: 2
- 2023: 0
- 2024: 0
- 2025: 0
- 2026: 0
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