Summary

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in elixir-mint Mint allows attacker-controlled HTTP/2 servers to exhaust memory in a Mint client via PUSH_PROMISE flooding.

In lib/mint/http2.ex, Mint.HTTP2.decode_push_promise_headers_and_add_response/5 inserts a :reserved_remote entry into conn.streams for every promised stream ID. The neighbouring Mint.HTTP2.assert_valid_promised_stream_id/2 only verifies that the promised ID is even and not already present; client_settings.max_concurrent_streams is not consulted at promise time. The concurrency cap is only checked when the response HEADERS for the promised stream arrive, so a server that emits PUSH_PROMISE frames and withholds the matching HEADERS never trips that check.

HTTP/2 server push is accepted by default (client_settings.enable_push defaults to true). A single long-lived HTTP/2 connection to a hostile server lets that server pin one conn.streams entry per PUSH_PROMISE frame it sends, with no upper bound, until the client process runs out of memory.

This issue affects mint: from 0.2.0 before 1.9.0.

Workarounds

Disable HTTP/2 server push on connections to untrusted servers by passing client_settings: [enable_push: false] to Mint.HTTP.connect/4. This makes Mint reject any inbound PUSH_PROMISE frame with a PROTOCOL_ERROR before the vulnerable code path is reached.