CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2025-29910 — Nasa Cryptolib security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.5

CryptoLib provides a software-only solution using the CCSDS Space Data Link Security Protocol - Extended Procedures (SDLS-EP) to secure communications between a spacecraft running the core Flight System (cFS) and a ground station. A memory leak vulnerability was identified in the `crypto_handle_incrementing_nontransmitted_counter` function of CryptoLib versions 1.3.3 and prior. This vulnerability can lead to resource exhaustion and degraded system performance over time, particularly in long-running processes or systems processing large volumes of data. The vulnerability is present in the `crypto_handle_incrementing_nontransmitted_counter` function within `crypto_tc.c`. The function allocates memory using `malloc` without ensuring the allocated memory is always freed. This issue can lead to resource exhaustion, reduced system performance, and potentially a Denial of Service (DoS) in environments where CryptoLib is used in long-running processes or with large volumes of data. Any system using CryptoLib, especially those handling high-throughput or continuous data streams, could be impacted. As of time of publication, no known patched versions are available.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.5 (3.1)
Published
2025-03-17
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-401

Affected products

  • nasa / cryptolib

Matched remediation archetype

Resource exhaustion and denial of service

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Identify attacker-influenced work factors including input size, nesting, compression, fan-out, regex cost, allocation, recursion, retries, and connection lifetime.
  • Map per-request and shared CPU, memory, disk, descriptor, thread, queue, and downstream-service limits.
  • Determine whether authentication, tenancy, quotas, and rate controls apply before expensive processing begins.

Remediate safely

  • Bound input size, nesting, expansion, work, concurrency, queue depth, retries, and execution time before resource-intensive processing.
  • Release resources on every success, error, cancellation, and timeout path and use backpressure instead of unbounded buffering.
  • Update affected components and add small deterministic tests that assert resource ceilings rather than exhausting a host.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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