Fortinet Discovers MongoDB Remote Denial of Service Vulnerability

Summary

Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs has discovered a remote denial of service vulnerability in MongoDB.
MongoDB is a cross-platform document-oriented database. Classified as a non-SQL database, MongoDB eschews the traditional table-based relational database structure in favor of JSON-like documents with dynamic schemas, making the integration of data in certain types of applications easier and faster.
The vulnerability allows remote attackers to launch a denial of service attack without providing any authentication credentials.

Solutions

FortiGuard Labs released the following FortiGate IPS signature which covers this specific vulnerability:

MongoDB.BSON.Handling.Remote.DoS
Released Feb 12, 2015
Users should apply the solution provided by MongoDB.

Additional Information

MongoDB fails to validate malformed BSON message. A specially crafted BSON message may trigger an uncaught exception in the server, which can result in a loss of availability. Since authentication is not required to exploit it, we suggest MongoDB users upgrading their MongoDB as soon as possible.

Acknowledgement

This vulnerability was discovered by Xiaopeng Zhang of Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs.

IPS Subscription

Fortinet customers who subscribe to Fortinet's intrusion prevention (IPS) service should be protected against this vulnerability with the appropriate configuration parameters in place. Fortinet's IPS service is one component of FortiGuard Subscription Services, which also offer comprehensive solutions such as antivirus, Web content filtering and antispam capabilities. These services enable protection against threats on both application and network layers. FortiGuard Services are continuously updated by FortiGuard Labs, which enables Fortinet to deliver a combination of multi-layered security intelligence and true zero-day protection from new and emerging threats. These updates are delivered to all FortiGate, FortiMail and FortiClient products. Fortinet strictly follows responsible disclosure guidelines to ensure optimum protection during a threat's lifecycle.