Description

A flaw was found in FreeIPA. A remote, unauthenticated attacker can exploit this vulnerability by sending oversized form POST requests to the `/ipa/migration/migration.py` endpoint. This can force the migration handler to read attacker-controlled request bodies fully into memory, leading to increased memory usage, slower request handling, and potential service disruption or denial of service.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "7.5",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-20T11:16:21.553Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-20T11:16:21.553Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A denial of service vulnerability exists within the FreeIPA identity management system, specifically impacting the migration handling subsystem. The flaw allows remote, unauthenticated threat actors to disrupt service availability by exhausting system memory resources.\nThe vulnerability resides in the request processing logic of the /ipa/migration/migration.py endpoint, which fails to adequately restrict or manage incoming form POST request body sizes. By transmitting maliciously crafted, oversized HTTP POST requests, an external attacker can force the application to read the complete attacker-controlled payload directly into system memory.\nThe primary impact of this exploitation vector is resource exhaustion, leading to significantly degraded request handling performance, increased memory consumption, and potential service disruption or complete denial of service for legitimate users interacting with the FreeIPA infrastructure.\nExploitation of this flaw requires network access to the target FreeIPA server's web interface, specifically targeting the vulnerable migration script. No prior authentication, user interaction, or elevated privileges are required to initiate the attack, lowering the barrier to entry for malicious actors seeking to impair system availability.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability is rooted in improper input validation and resource management within the FreeIPA migration handler located at the /ipa/migration/migration.py endpoint. When handling incoming HTTP form POST requests, the vulnerable component processes the request body without implementing strict boundaries or stream-based parsing limitations on the total expected data size.\nThe attack flow initiates when a remote, unauthenticated attacker crafts a specialized HTTP POST request containing an excessively large payload directed at the /ipa/migration/migration.py URI over the network using standard web protocols. Because the application logic lacks adequate size constraints, the migration handler attempts to ingest and read the entire attacker-controlled request body fully into the system's volatile memory.\nAs the server allocates memory to accommodate the oversized payload, the underlying host experiences a rapid escalation in memory utilization. Continued transmission of such payloads or concurrent execution of this attack exhausts available RAM and associated system resources. This resource starvation directly precipitates slower request handling across the FreeIPA services and ultimately results in service disruption or a complete denial of service condition.\nThe affected component is the migration script executed via the web application interface. Prerequisites for exploitation include network connectivity to the endpoint and the transmission of specially formatted HTTP POST requests. The vulnerability is entirely remote and exploitable without valid credentials or administrative privileges."
}