hacnho/protobuf-filedescriptor-dependency-dos-poc

Protocol Buffers FileDescriptorProto dependency materialization DoS PoC

This repository contains a benign security research PoC for a protobuf binary artifact that drives large repeated-string materialization during normal parse.

Files:

• control_one_dependency.pb
• malicious_dependency_5000000.pb
• reproduce.py

Observed behavior:

• control artifact:
  • parses successfully with zero dependency entries
• malicious artifact:
  • same size as control
  • parses successfully with 5,000,000 dependency entries
  • peak RSS increases by about 200404 kB
  • parse is about 14.33x slower than the control

Reproduction:

python3 build_poc.py
python3 reproduce.py

Public files:

• https://huggingface.co/hacnho/protobuf-filedescriptor-dependency-dos-poc/resolve/main/control_one_dependency.pb
• https://huggingface.co/hacnho/protobuf-filedescriptor-dependency-dos-poc/resolve/main/malicious_dependency_5000000.pb
• https://huggingface.co/hacnho/protobuf-filedescriptor-dependency-dos-poc/resolve/main/reproduce.py