Capgo Denial of Service via Unlimited Demo App Creation

Detection Guidance

This vulnerability can be detected by monitoring for excessive or repeated POST requests to the /app/demo endpoint from authenticated users with organization write permissions.

Since each request triggers approximately 138 database write operations, unusually high database write activity correlated with these requests can indicate exploitation.

Commands to detect this might include:

• Using web server logs or network monitoring tools to filter POST requests to /app/demo, for example, with grep or similar tools:
• grep 'POST /app/demo' /var/log/nginx/access.log
• Monitoring database write operations or slow queries that spike in correlation with these requests.
• Using application logs to identify repeated demo app creation attempts by the same user or IP.

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Executive Summary

This vulnerability exists in Capgo versions before 12.128.2 and involves the POST /app/demo endpoint. Authenticated users who have organization write permissions can exploit this vulnerability by creating unlimited demo applications without any rate limiting or quota enforcement.

Each request to this endpoint can generate approximately 138 database write operations, which can be repeatedly invoked by attackers.

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Impact Analysis

The vulnerability can lead to degraded performance of the affected system due to the high volume of database write operations triggered by each request.

It can also increase operational costs because of the excessive resource usage and may cause potential service instability.

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Compliance Impact

The provided information does not specify any direct impact of this vulnerability on compliance with common standards and regulations such as GDPR or HIPAA.

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Mitigation Strategies

Immediate mitigation steps include implementing rate limiting and quota enforcement on the POST /app/demo endpoint to prevent unlimited demo app creation.

Other recommended actions are:

• Enforce plan-based quotas restricting the number of demo apps a user or organization can create.
• Implement strict per-user and per-organization rate limiting controls.
• Move demo data generation to asynchronous jobs with bounded work to reduce immediate resource consumption.
• Restrict demo app creation to UI-only flows to prevent automated abuse via API calls.

Upgrading to Capgo version 12.128.2 or later, where this vulnerability is patched, is strongly advised.

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