NASA cFS Aquila Memory Management Module Denial-of-Service Vulnerability

A denial-of-service vulnerability has been identified in NASA's Core Flight System (cFS) version Aquila. The issue arises in the Memory Management Module (MM), which fails to properly validate memory addresses before reading or writing. This flaw can be exploited by sending a malicious telecommand, leading to segmentation faults and application crashes. The vulnerability is exacerbated by the default memory validation settings in most operating systems, which allow unauthorized access to physical memory.

Impact

Exploitation of this vulnerability causes segmentation faults by accessing invalid memory, leading to application crashes. This disrupts the functionality of the cFS instance and can cause resource exhaustion by filling application tables with inactive entries, preventing new applications from launching.

Reproduction

The vulnerability can be reproduced by sending the 'MM_DUMP_MEM_TO_FILE_CMD' command with an invalid memory address. This command bypasses memory validation checks, causing the cFS instance to crash. The same issue occurs with the 'MM_DUMP_IN_EVENT_CMD' and 'MM_LOAD_MEM_FROM_FILE_CMD' commands, which also fail to validate memory addresses properly before performing memory operations, leading to similar segmentation faults.

Remediation

To address this vulnerability, it is recommended to implement proper memory address validation before executing read or write operations. The default configuration should not allow the entire memory space to be marked as valid without warnings. Additionally, sensitive files should be protected from write access to prevent corruption that could disrupt application functionality.