CVE-2024-21652: 
Argo CD vulnerability analysis and mitigation

Argo CD, a declarative GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes, was found to contain a critical security vulnerability (CVE-2024-21652) affecting versions prior to 2.8.13, 2.9.9, and 2.10.4. The vulnerability allows attackers to bypass the brute force login protection mechanism through a combination of vulnerabilities (Vendor Advisory).

The vulnerability stems from two interconnected issues: a Denial of Service (DoS) flaw caused by unsafe array modifications in a multi-threaded environment, and an in-memory data storage weakness where failed login attempts are stored without persistence. When the application crashes and restarts, the stored data is lost, effectively resetting the brute force protections. The vulnerability has received a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 CRITICAL with the vector string CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H (NVD).

The vulnerability enables attackers to bypass the brute force login protection mechanism, allowing them to make unlimited login attempts. This significantly increases the risk of account compromise. Additionally, attackers can crash the service, affecting all users of the system (Vendor Advisory).

The vulnerability can be exploited by chaining a DoS attack with the in-memory data storage weakness. An attacker can trigger a server restart via the DoS vulnerability after reaching the failed login attempt limit, which resets the counter for failed login attempts, allowing for unlimited authentication attempts (Vendor Advisory).

Users should upgrade to the patched versions: 2.8.13, 2.9.9, or 2.10.4, which contain fixes for this vulnerability (NVD).