CVE-2024-55885: Beego Information Disclosure Vulnerability

CVE-2024-55885 Overview

CVE-2024-55885 affects beego, an open-source web framework for the Go programming language. Versions of beego prior to 2.3.4 use MD5 as the hashing algorithm in the file cache writer component. MD5 has known weaknesses against collision attacks and is no longer considered cryptographically secure. The beego maintainers replaced MD5 with SHA-256 in version 2.3.4 to address the issue. The vulnerability is categorized under [CWE-327] Use of a Broken or Risky Cryptographic Algorithm.

Critical Impact

Use of MD5 in beego file cache operations exposes cached data integrity to collision attacks, potentially allowing attackers to craft inputs that produce identical hashes and undermine cache integrity guarantees.

Affected Products

• beego framework versions prior to 2.3.4
• Go applications using client/cache/file.go with the affected beego versions
• Web services built on beego with file cache enabled

Discovery Timeline

• 2024-12-12 - CVE-2024-55885 published to NVD
• 2025-08-01 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2024-55885

Vulnerability Analysis

The beego framework uses MD5 in its file cache writer to generate hash-based identifiers for cached entries. MD5 produces 128-bit digests and has documented collision weaknesses. Attackers with sufficient resources can construct two distinct inputs that hash to the same value. In the context of beego's file cache, this weakness can be leveraged to cause cache key collisions, potentially leading to integrity issues in cached content. The flaw is a cryptographic algorithm weakness rather than an injection or memory safety issue.

Root Cause

The root cause is the explicit use of the crypto/md5 package within client/cache/file.go to derive hash values. MD5 is considered broken for collision resistance, and best practice requires modern algorithms such as SHA-256. The maintainers addressed this by switching the import from crypto/md5 to crypto/sha256 and updating the hashing logic accordingly.

Attack Vector

Exploitation requires an attacker to influence inputs processed by the file cache hashing function. Because beego applications are typically network accessible, the attack vector is network-based with low complexity and no required privileges. The realistic impact is limited to cache integrity rather than direct code execution or data exfiltration.

// Patch: client/cache/file.go - replacing MD5 with SHA-256
 import (
 	"bytes"
 	"context"
-	"crypto/md5"
+	"crypto/sha256"
 	"encoding/gob"
 	"encoding/hex"
 	"encoding/json"

Source: GitHub Commit e7fa4835

Detection Methods for CVE-2024-55885

Indicators of Compromise

• Presence of beego versions earlier than 2.3.4 in Go module manifests (go.mod, go.sum)
• File cache entries with MD5-derived filenames in beego cache directories
• Source code imports of crypto/md5 within beego cache handling paths

Detection Strategies

• Run software composition analysis (SCA) tooling against Go projects to identify vulnerable beego versions
• Scan repositories and build artifacts for beego/beego module versions below 2.3.4
• Inspect dependency graphs in CI/CD pipelines to flag affected releases prior to deployment

Monitoring Recommendations

• Track beego project releases and security advisories via the GitHub Security Advisory GHSA-9j3m-fr7q-jxfw
• Monitor application logs for cache lookup anomalies that could indicate hash collisions
• Subscribe to NVD feeds for updates affecting cpe:2.3:a:beego:beego

How to Mitigate CVE-2024-55885

Immediate Actions Required

• Upgrade beego to version 2.3.4 or later in all affected applications
• Rebuild and redeploy Go binaries with the updated dependency
• Invalidate existing cache entries that were generated using MD5 hashing
• Audit application code for any direct use of MD5 in security-sensitive contexts

Patch Information

The fix is available in beego 2.3.4. The maintainers replaced crypto/md5 with crypto/sha256 in client/cache/file.go via commit e7fa4835f71f47ab1d13afd638cebf661800d5a4. Full details are documented in the beego Security Advisory GHSA-9j3m-fr7q-jxfw.

Workarounds

• Disable file-based caching in beego configurations until the upgrade is applied
• Substitute an alternative cache backend such as in-memory or Redis to avoid the affected code path
• Restrict network exposure of beego services pending remediation

# Upgrade beego to the patched version
go get github.com/beego/beego/v2@v2.3.4
go mod tidy
go build ./...