Uncontrolled Recursion and Asymmetric Resource Consumption (Amplification) in media/file proxy in Misskey

Summary

Misskey is an open source, federated social media platform. In affected versions FileServerService (media proxy) in github.com/misskey-dev/misskey 2024.10.1 or earlier did not detect proxy loops, which allows remote actors to execute a self-propagating reflected/amplified distributed denial-of-service via a maliciously crafted note. FileServerService.prototype.proxyHandler did not check incoming requests are not coming from another proxy server. An attacker can execute an amplified denial-of-service by sending a nested proxy request to the server and end the request with a malicious redirect back to another nested proxy request. Leading to unbounded recursion until the original request is timed out. This issue has been addressed in version 2024.11.0-alpha.3. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade may configure the reverse proxy to block requests to the proxy with an empty User-Agent header or one containing Misskey/. An attacker can not effectively modify the User-Agent header without making another request to the server.