free5GC NRF Discovery EncodeGroupId Function Panics on Malformed group-id-list Parameter

free5GC is an open source 5G core network. free5GC NRF prior to version 1.4.2 has an Improper Input Validation vulnerability leading to Denial of Service. All deployments of free5GC using the NRF discovery service are affected. The EncodeGroupId function attempts to access array indices [0], [1], [2] without validating the length of the split data. When the parameter contains insufficient separator characters, the code panics with "index out of range". A remote attacker can cause the NRF service to panic and crash by sending a crafted HTTP GET request with a malformed group-id-list parameter. This results in complete denial of service for the NRF discovery service. free5GC NRF version 1.4.2 fixes the issue. There is no direct workaround at the application level. The recommendation is to apply the provided patch or restrict access to the NRF API to trusted sources only.