CVE-2024-47534

HIGH7.5EPSS 0.26%

Incorrect delegation lookups can make go-tuf download the wrong artifact

Published: 10/1/2024Modified: 2/4/2026
Also known as:GHSA-4f8r-qqr9-fq8jCGA-8784-5948-h3qwGO-2024-3166

Description

During the ongoing work on the TUF conformance test suite, we have come across a test that reveals what we believe is a bug in go-tuf with security implications. The bug exists in go-tuf delegation tracing and could result in downloading the wrong artifact. We have come across this issue in the test in this PR: https://github.com/theupdateframework/tuf-conformance/pull/115. The test - `test_graph_traversal` - sets up a repository with a series of delegations, invokes the clients `refresh()` and then checks the order in which the client traced the delegations. The test shows that the go-tuf client inconsistently traces the delegations in a wrong way. For example, [during one CI run](https://github.com/theupdateframework/tuf-conformance/pull/115#issuecomment-2275625542), the `two-level-delegations` test case triggered a wrong order. The delegations in this look as such: ```python "two-level-delegations": DelegationsTestCase( delegations=[ DelegationTester("targets", "A"), DelegationTester("targets", "B"), DelegationTester("B", "C"), ], visited_order=["A", "B", "C"], ), ``` Here, `targets` delegate to `"A"`, and to `"B"`, and `"B"` delegates to `"C"`. The client should trace the delegations in the order `"A"` then `"B"` then `"C"` but in this particular CI run, go-tuf traced the delegations `"B"->"C"->"A"`. In a subsequent CI run, this test case did not fail, but [another one did](https://github.com/theupdateframework/tuf-conformance/pull/115#issuecomment-2275640487). @jku has done a bit of debugging and believes that the returned map of `GetRolesForTarget` returns a map that causes this behavior: https://github.com/theupdateframework/go-tuf/blob/f95222bdd22d2ac4e5b8ed6fe912b645e213c3b5/metadata/metadata.go#L565-L580 We believe that this map should be an ordered list instead of a map.

Affected packages (2)

CVSS scores

SourceVersionSeverityVector
osvCVSS 4.0—CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
osvCVSS 3.1HIGH7.5CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

References (8)