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Memory LeakWeakness · CWE-401

CVE-2024-1394

HIGH · 7.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2024-03-21
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
84/100
Remediation priority · High
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
A memory leak flaw was found in Golang in the RSA encrypting/decrypting code, which might lead to a resource exhaustion vulnerability using attacker-controlled inputs​. The memory leak happens in github.com/golang-fips/openssl/openssl/rsa.go#L113. The objects leaked are pkey​ and ctx​. That function uses named return parameters to free pkey​ and ctx​ if there is an error initializing the context or setting the different properties. All return statements related to error cases follow the "return nil, nil, fail(...)" pattern, meaning that pkey​ and ctx​ will be nil inside the deferred function that should free them.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-401

Allocated memory is never released on some path, so a long-running service or a repeatedly triggered request steadily consumes memory until performance degrades or the process crashes. Attackers exploit it by simply driving the leaking path. Remediation is pairing every allocation with a release and using ownership patterns or tooling to catch what leaks.

General guidance for the memory leak class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

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

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Patch available Apply the vendor patch
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix Moderate confidence

Latest version of github.com/golang-fips/openssl that includes commit 85d31d0d257ce842c8a1e63c4d230ae850348136

  1. Identify the current version of github.com/golang-fips/openssl in use by reviewing go.mod or vendor dependencies
  2. Check the commit history or release notes for the repository to determine which version includes the fix from commit 85d31d0d257ce842c8a1e63c4d230ae850348136
  3. Upgrade to a release version that incorporates the fix, or manually apply the patch if no newer release is available
  4. After upgrading, verify the fix by reviewing the rsa.go file to confirm the deferred cleanup properly handles named return parameters for pkey and ctx
  5. Re-run any RSA encryption/decryption tests to ensure functionality is intact

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2024-1394 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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What this is

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  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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