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XStream can cause a Denial of Service

High
joehni published GHSA-2p3x-qw9c-25hh Mar 13, 2021

Package

maven com.thoughtworks.xstream (Maven)

Affected versions

< 1.4.16

Patched versions

1.4.16

Description

Impact

The vulnerability may allow a remote attacker to allocate 100% CPU time on the target system depending on CPU type or parallel execution of such a payload resulting in a denial of service only by manipulating the processed input stream. No user is affected, who followed the recommendation to setup XStream's security framework with a whitelist limited to the minimal required types.

Patches

If you rely on XStream's default blacklist of the Security Framework, you will have to use at least version 1.4.16.

Workarounds

See workarounds for the different versions covering all CVEs.

References

See full information about the nature of the vulnerability and the steps to reproduce it in XStream's documentation for CVE-2021-21341.

Credits

The vulnerability was discovered and reported by threedr3am.

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

Severity

High

CVE ID

CVE-2021-21341

Weaknesses

Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource, thereby enabling an actor to influence the amount of resources consumed, eventually leading to the exhaustion of available resources. Learn more on MITRE.

Deserialization of Untrusted Data

The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently verifying that the resulting data will be valid. Learn more on MITRE.

Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop')

The product contains an iteration or loop with an exit condition that cannot be reached, i.e., an infinite loop. Learn more on MITRE.