Vulnerability Database

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Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2021-43173 — nlnetlabs / routinator

Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

In NLnet Labs Routinator prior to 0.10.2, a validation run can be delayed significantly by an RRDP repository by not answering but slowly drip-feeding bytes to keep the connection alive. This can be used to effectively stall validation. While Routinator has a configurable time-out value for RRDP connections, this time-out was only applied to individual read or write operations rather than the complete request. Thus, if an RRDP repository sends a little bit of data before that time-out expired, it can continuously extend the time it takes for the request to finish. Since validation will only continue once the update of an RRDP repository has concluded, this delay will cause validation to stall, leading to Routinator continuing to serve the old data set or, if in the initial validation run directly after starting, never serve any data at all.

  • Published: Nov 9, 2021
  • Updated: Nov 16, 2025
  • CVE: CVE-2021-43173
  • Severity: High
  • Exploit:
  • CISA KEV:

CVSS v3:

  • Severity: High
  • Score: 7.5
  • AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

CVSS v2:

  • Severity: Medium
  • Score: 5
  • AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N

Frequently Asked Questions

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

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