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.
AI Insight
LLM-synthesized narrative grounded in this CVE's description and references.
In Synapse before 1.25.0, a malicious homeserver could redirect .well-known requests to a large file, causing resource exhaustion and denial of service.
Vulnerability
CVE-2021-21274 is a denial-of-service vulnerability in Synapse, the reference Matrix homeserver written in Python. The root cause is that Synapse did not enforce a maximum size when fetching the .well-known file of a remote homeserver during federation. A malicious homeserver could redirect these requests to an arbitrarily large file, causing the requesting server to consume excessive resources (bandwidth, memory, CPU) while downloading the payload [1][2].
Exploitation
An attacker controls a homeserver that is federated with the target server. When the target server attempts to resolve the attacker's .well-known URI (e.g., during a federation handshake), the attacker's server responds with a redirect to a large file. No authentication is required beyond the ability to federate; any server that accepts federation requests from untrusted servers is affected [2].
Impact
Successful exploitation leads to a denial-of-service condition on the requesting homeserver. The server may become unresponsive or crash due to resource exhaustion, disrupting normal Matrix communication for its users [2].
Mitigation
The issue is fixed in Synapse version 1.25.0, which introduces a maximum size limit for .well-known lookups [1][3]. As a workaround, administrators can restrict federation to a whitelist of trusted domains using the federation_domain_whitelist configuration option, preventing interaction with untrusted servers [2].
AI Insight generated on May 21, 2026. Synthesized from this CVE's description and the cited reference URLs; citations are validated against the source bundle.
Affected packages
Versions sourced from the GitHub Security Advisory.
| Package | Affected versions | Patched versions |
|---|---|---|
matrix-synapsePyPI | >= 0.99.0, < 1.25.0 | 1.25.0 |
Affected products
2- matrix-org/synapsev5Range: >=0.99.0, < 1.25.0
Patches
1ff5c4da1289cAdd a maximum size for well-known lookups. (#8950)
5 files changed · +80 −18
changelog.d/8950.misc+1 −0 added@@ -0,0 +1 @@ +Add a maximum size of 50 kilobytes to .well-known lookups.
synapse/http/client.py+18 −14 modified@@ -720,11 +720,14 @@ async def get_file( try: length = await make_deferred_yieldable( - readBodyToFile(response, output_stream, max_size) + read_body_with_max_size(response, output_stream, max_size) + ) + except BodyExceededMaxSize: + SynapseError( + 502, + "Requested file is too large > %r bytes" % (max_size,), + Codes.TOO_LARGE, ) - except SynapseError: - # This can happen e.g. because the body is too large. - raise except Exception as e: raise SynapseError(502, ("Failed to download remote body: %s" % e)) from e @@ -748,7 +751,11 @@ def _timeout_to_request_timed_out_error(f: Failure): return f -class _ReadBodyToFileProtocol(protocol.Protocol): +class BodyExceededMaxSize(Exception): + """The maximum allowed size of the HTTP body was exceeded.""" + + +class _ReadBodyWithMaxSizeProtocol(protocol.Protocol): def __init__( self, stream: BinaryIO, deferred: defer.Deferred, max_size: Optional[int] ): @@ -761,13 +768,7 @@ def dataReceived(self, data: bytes) -> None: self.stream.write(data) self.length += len(data) if self.max_size is not None and self.length >= self.max_size: - self.deferred.errback( - SynapseError( - 502, - "Requested file is too large > %r bytes" % (self.max_size,), - Codes.TOO_LARGE, - ) - ) + self.deferred.errback(BodyExceededMaxSize()) self.deferred = defer.Deferred() self.transport.loseConnection() @@ -782,12 +783,15 @@ def connectionLost(self, reason: Failure) -> None: self.deferred.errback(reason) -def readBodyToFile( +def read_body_with_max_size( response: IResponse, stream: BinaryIO, max_size: Optional[int] ) -> defer.Deferred: """ Read a HTTP response body to a file-object. Optionally enforcing a maximum file size. + If the maximum file size is reached, the returned Deferred will resolve to a + Failure with a BodyExceededMaxSize exception. + Args: response: The HTTP response to read from. stream: The file-object to write to. @@ -798,7 +802,7 @@ def readBodyToFile( """ d = defer.Deferred() - response.deliverBody(_ReadBodyToFileProtocol(stream, d, max_size)) + response.deliverBody(_ReadBodyWithMaxSizeProtocol(stream, d, max_size)) return d
synapse/http/federation/well_known_resolver.py+23 −2 modified@@ -15,17 +15,19 @@ import logging import random import time +from io import BytesIO from typing import Callable, Dict, Optional, Tuple import attr from twisted.internet import defer from twisted.internet.interfaces import IReactorTime -from twisted.web.client import RedirectAgent, readBody +from twisted.web.client import RedirectAgent from twisted.web.http import stringToDatetime from twisted.web.http_headers import Headers from twisted.web.iweb import IAgent, IResponse +from synapse.http.client import BodyExceededMaxSize, read_body_with_max_size from synapse.logging.context import make_deferred_yieldable from synapse.util import Clock, json_decoder from synapse.util.caches.ttlcache import TTLCache @@ -53,6 +55,9 @@ # lower bound for .well-known cache period WELL_KNOWN_MIN_CACHE_PERIOD = 5 * 60 +# The maximum size (in bytes) to allow a well-known file to be. +WELL_KNOWN_MAX_SIZE = 50 * 1024 # 50 KiB + # Attempt to refetch a cached well-known N% of the TTL before it expires. # e.g. if set to 0.2 and we have a cached entry with a TTL of 5mins, then # we'll start trying to refetch 1 minute before it expires. @@ -229,6 +234,9 @@ async def _make_well_known_request( server_name: name of the server, from the requested url retry: Whether to retry the request if it fails. + Raises: + _FetchWellKnownFailure if we fail to lookup a result + Returns: Returns the response object and body. Response may be a non-200 response. """ @@ -250,7 +258,11 @@ async def _make_well_known_request( b"GET", uri, headers=Headers(headers) ) ) - body = await make_deferred_yieldable(readBody(response)) + body_stream = BytesIO() + await make_deferred_yieldable( + read_body_with_max_size(response, body_stream, WELL_KNOWN_MAX_SIZE) + ) + body = body_stream.getvalue() if 500 <= response.code < 600: raise Exception("Non-200 response %s" % (response.code,)) @@ -259,6 +271,15 @@ async def _make_well_known_request( except defer.CancelledError: # Bail if we've been cancelled raise + except BodyExceededMaxSize: + # If the well-known file was too large, do not keep attempting + # to download it, but consider it a temporary error. + logger.warning( + "Requested .well-known file for %s is too large > %r bytes", + server_name.decode("ascii"), + WELL_KNOWN_MAX_SIZE, + ) + raise _FetchWellKnownFailure(temporary=True) except Exception as e: if not retry or i >= WELL_KNOWN_RETRY_ATTEMPTS: logger.info("Error fetching %s: %s", uri_str, e)
synapse/http/matrixfederationclient.py+11 −2 modified@@ -37,16 +37,19 @@ import synapse.metrics import synapse.util.retryutils from synapse.api.errors import ( + Codes, FederationDeniedError, HttpResponseException, RequestSendFailed, + SynapseError, ) from synapse.http import QuieterFileBodyProducer from synapse.http.client import ( BlacklistingAgentWrapper, BlacklistingReactorWrapper, + BodyExceededMaxSize, encode_query_args, - readBodyToFile, + read_body_with_max_size, ) from synapse.http.federation.matrix_federation_agent import MatrixFederationAgent from synapse.logging.context import make_deferred_yieldable @@ -975,9 +978,15 @@ async def get_file( headers = dict(response.headers.getAllRawHeaders()) try: - d = readBodyToFile(response, output_stream, max_size) + d = read_body_with_max_size(response, output_stream, max_size) d.addTimeout(self.default_timeout, self.reactor) length = await make_deferred_yieldable(d) + except BodyExceededMaxSize: + msg = "Requested file is too large > %r bytes" % (max_size,) + logger.warning( + "{%s} [%s] %s", request.txn_id, request.destination, msg, + ) + SynapseError(502, msg, Codes.TOO_LARGE) except Exception as e: logger.warning( "{%s} [%s] Error reading response: %s",
tests/http/federation/test_matrix_federation_agent.py+27 −0 modified@@ -36,6 +36,7 @@ from synapse.http.federation.matrix_federation_agent import MatrixFederationAgent from synapse.http.federation.srv_resolver import Server from synapse.http.federation.well_known_resolver import ( + WELL_KNOWN_MAX_SIZE, WellKnownResolver, _cache_period_from_headers, ) @@ -1107,6 +1108,32 @@ def test_well_known_cache_with_temp_failure(self): r = self.successResultOf(fetch_d) self.assertEqual(r.delegated_server, None) + def test_well_known_too_large(self): + """A well-known query that returns a result which is too large should be rejected.""" + self.reactor.lookups["testserv"] = "1.2.3.4" + + fetch_d = defer.ensureDeferred( + self.well_known_resolver.get_well_known(b"testserv") + ) + + # there should be an attempt to connect on port 443 for the .well-known + clients = self.reactor.tcpClients + self.assertEqual(len(clients), 1) + (host, port, client_factory, _timeout, _bindAddress) = clients.pop(0) + self.assertEqual(host, "1.2.3.4") + self.assertEqual(port, 443) + + self._handle_well_known_connection( + client_factory, + expected_sni=b"testserv", + response_headers={b"Cache-Control": b"max-age=1000"}, + content=b'{ "m.server": "' + (b"a" * WELL_KNOWN_MAX_SIZE) + b'" }', + ) + + # The result is sucessful, but disabled delegation. + r = self.successResultOf(fetch_d) + self.assertIsNone(r.delegated_server) + def test_srv_fallbacks(self): """Test that other SRV results are tried if the first one fails. """
Vulnerability mechanics
Generated on May 9, 2026. Inputs: CWE entries + fix-commit diffs from this CVE's patches. Citations validated against bundle.
References
9- github.com/advisories/GHSA-2hwx-mjrm-v3g8ghsaADVISORY
- lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TNNAJOZNMVMXM6AS7RFFKB4QLUJ4IFEY/mitrevendor-advisoryx_refsource_FEDORA
- nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-21274ghsaADVISORY
- github.com/matrix-org/synapse/commit/ff5c4da1289cb5e097902b3e55b771be342c29d6ghsax_refsource_MISCWEB
- github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/8950ghsax_refsource_MISCWEB
- github.com/matrix-org/synapse/releases/tag/v1.25.0ghsax_refsource_MISCWEB
- github.com/matrix-org/synapse/security/advisories/GHSA-2hwx-mjrm-v3g8ghsax_refsource_CONFIRMWEB
- github.com/pypa/advisory-database/tree/main/vulns/matrix-synapse/PYSEC-2021-132.yamlghsaWEB
- lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TNNAJOZNMVMXM6AS7RFFKB4QLUJ4IFEYghsaWEB
News mentions
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