CVE-2024-9229 is a Denial of Service vulnerability categorized under CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling) affecting the stangirard/quivr application, specifically its file upload functionality. The vulnerability arises when an attacker sends a specially crafted HTTP multipart request with an excessively long multipart boundary by appending characters to its end. The server, upon receiving this malformed boundary, enters a state of continuous processing for each appended character, consuming excessive CPU and memory resources. This behavior leads to resource exhaustion, causing the service to become unresponsive and denying legitimate users access. The vulnerability affects all versions of stangirard/quivr prior to the fix, though specific affected versions are unspecified. The attack vector is network-based, requiring no authentication or user interaction, which increases the risk of widespread exploitation. The CVSS v3.0 score of 7.5 reflects a high severity due to the ease of exploitation and the significant impact on availability, though confidentiality and integrity remain unaffected. No patches or official fixes have been released at the time of this report, and no known exploits have been observed in the wild. The vulnerability highlights a lack of proper input validation and resource management in the multipart parsing logic of the application, emphasizing the need for robust throttling mechanisms to prevent resource exhaustion attacks.

For European organizations, the primary impact of CVE-2024-9229 is service disruption due to Denial of Service conditions. Organizations relying on stangirard/quivr for critical operations, especially those handling file uploads or managing user-generated content, may experience downtime, leading to operational delays and potential loss of customer trust. The unavailability of services can affect business continuity, particularly for sectors like finance, healthcare, and public services where uptime is critical. Additionally, the ease of exploitation without authentication means attackers can launch attacks at scale, potentially causing widespread outages. While the vulnerability does not compromise data confidentiality or integrity, the availability impact alone can have severe financial and reputational consequences. European cloud service providers or SaaS platforms integrating stangirard/quivr could also face cascading effects if the vulnerability is exploited, affecting multiple downstream customers. The lack of patches increases the urgency for proactive mitigation to avoid exploitation.

To mitigate CVE-2024-9229, organizations should implement several specific measures beyond generic advice: 1) Apply strict input validation on multipart boundaries to reject malformed or excessively long boundaries before processing. 2) Introduce resource throttling and limits on the size and complexity of multipart requests to prevent excessive CPU and memory consumption. 3) Deploy rate limiting on file upload endpoints to reduce the risk of automated or volumetric attacks exploiting this vulnerability. 4) Monitor server resource usage and implement anomaly detection to identify unusual spikes indicative of exploitation attempts. 5) If possible, isolate the file upload service in a container or sandbox environment to limit the impact of resource exhaustion. 6) Engage with the vendor or open-source community to obtain patches or updates addressing this vulnerability as soon as they become available. 7) Consider implementing Web Application Firewalls (WAF) with custom rules to detect and block suspicious multipart boundary manipulations. 8) Conduct regular security assessments and penetration tests focusing on file upload functionalities to uncover similar weaknesses.