title: Denial of service attack via .well-known lookups
description: Synapse is a Matrix reference homeserver written in python (pypi package matrix-synapse). Matrix is an ecosystem for open federated Instant Messaging and VoIP. In Synapse before version 1.25.0, a malicious homeserver could redirect requests to their .well-known file to a large file. This can lead to a denial of service attack where homeservers will consume significantly more resources when requesting the .well-known file of a malicious homeserver. This affects any server which accepts federation requests from untrusted servers. Issue is resolved in version 1.25.0. As a workaround the `federation_domain_whitelist` setting can be used to restrict the homeservers communicated with over federation.
problem types: CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
affected:
{
product: synapse
vendor: matrix-org
versions:
status: affected, version: >=0.99.0, < 1.25.0
}
metrics:
cvssV3_1: [
attackComplexity: LOW
attackVector: NETWORK
availabilityImpact: LOW
baseScore: 4.3
baseSeverity: MEDIUM
confidentialityImpact: NONE
integrityImpact: NONE
privilegesRequired: NONE
scope: UNCHANGED
userInteraction: REQUIRED
vectorString: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
version: 3.1
]