Unmarshal Stack Exhaustion via Recursive Structures

Executive Summary

This vulnerability involves a lack of recursion limit enforcement in the Unmarshal function, which can lead to stack exhaustion when processing deeply-nested or recursive data structures. This may cause the program to crash due to excessive memory or stack usage.

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Detection Guidance

This vulnerability is related to stack exhaustion in Go's Unmarshal function when parsing deeply-nested structures. Detection requires checking Go applications using untrusted input parsing. Inspect Go code for unmarshal operations on user-controlled data. Use static analysis tools like 'govulncheck' or 'staticcheck' to identify vulnerable patterns. Monitor for crashes or stack overflow errors in Go applications processing complex nested inputs.

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Impact Analysis

If exploited, this vulnerability could allow an attacker to crash applications by sending maliciously crafted input with excessive recursion depth. This may lead to denial-of-service conditions, disrupting services that rely on the affected software.

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Compliance Impact

This vulnerability primarily causes denial-of-service conditions by triggering stack exhaustion during ASN.1 parsing. It does not directly impact data confidentiality or integrity, which are key focus areas for GDPR and HIPAA compliance. However, availability disruptions could indirectly affect compliance if systems fail to process critical data in time.

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Mitigation Strategies

Update to the latest version of Go that includes the enforced recursion limit in Unmarshal to prevent stack exhaustion from deeply-nested structures.

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