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XStream is vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack due to stack overflow from a manipulated binary input stream

High
joehni published GHSA-hfq9-hggm-c56q Nov 7, 2024

Package

maven com.thoughtworks.xstream (Maven)

Affected versions

<1.4.20

Patched versions

1.4.21

Description

Impact

The vulnerability may allow a remote attacker to terminate the application with a stack overflow error resulting in a denial of service only by manipulating the processed input stream when XStream is configured to use the BinaryStreamDriver.

Patches

XStream 1.4.21 detects the manipulation in the binary input stream causing the the stack overflow and raises an InputManipulationException instead.

Workarounds

The only solution is to catch the StackOverflowError in the client code calling XStream if XStream is configured to use the BinaryStreamDriver.

References

See full information about the nature of the vulnerability and the steps to reproduce it in XStream's documentation for CVE-2024-47072.

Credits

Alexis Challande of Trail Of Bits found and reported the issue to XStream and provided the required information to reproduce it.

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CVE ID

CVE-2024-47072

Weaknesses

Credits