CVE-2011-1483 JBossWS vulnerable to uncontrolled recursion

Medium 5.0 Published 28 Jul 2013 Updated 6 Aug 2024

Remote attackers can cause denial of service via crafted XML with nested entities in JBossWS Native, requiring patches for affected JBoss platforms.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Over the internet
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2011-1483?

CVE-2011-1483 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Redhat Jboss Enterprise Application Platform, published on 28 Jul 2013. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

wsf/common/DOMUtils.java in JBossWS Native in Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.2.0.CP09, 4.3, and 5.1.1; JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform 4.3.CP06 and 5.1.1; JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform 4.2.CP05, 4.3.CP05, and 5.1.0; JBoss Communications Platform 1.2.11 and 5.1.1; JBoss Enterprise BRMS Platform 5.1.0; and JBoss Enterprise Web Platform 5.1.1 does not properly handle recursion during entity expansion, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory and CPU consumption) via a crafted request containing an XML document with a DOCTYPE declaration and a large number of nested entity references, a similar issue to CVE-2003-1564.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2011-1483?

2 open source packages ship an affected version, including org.jboss.ws:jbossws-common. It affects 7 products.

Package	Affected	Fixed in
`org.jboss.ws:jbossws-common` Maven	All versions	`2.1.0.Final`
`org.jboss.ws:jbossws-common` Maven	All versions	`2.1.0.Final`

Linux distribution packages (13)

`jbossas` Red Hat:jboss_enterprise_application_platform:4.2.0::el4	All versions	`0:4.2.0-6.GA_CP09.11.ep1.el4`
`jbossas-4.2.0.GA_CP09-bin` Red Hat:jboss_enterprise_application_platform:4.2.0::el4	All versions	`0:4.2.0-6.GA_CP09.11.ep1.el4`
`jbossas-client` Red Hat:jboss_enterprise_application_platform:4.2.0::el4	All versions	`0:4.2.0-6.GA_CP09.11.ep1.el4`
`jbossas` Red Hat:jboss_enterprise_application_platform:4.2.0::el5	All versions	`0:4.2.0-6.GA_CP09.11.1.ep1.el5`
`jbossas-4.2.0.GA_CP09-bin` Red Hat:jboss_enterprise_application_platform:4.2.0::el5	All versions	`0:4.2.0-6.GA_CP09.11.1.ep1.el5`
`jbossas-client` Red Hat:jboss_enterprise_application_platform:4.2.0::el5	All versions	`0:4.2.0-6.GA_CP09.11.1.ep1.el5`
`jbossws-common` Red Hat:jboss_enterprise_application_platform:4.3.0::el4	All versions	`0:1.0.0-5.GA_CP07_patch_01.1.ep1.el4`
`jbossws-common` Red Hat:jboss_enterprise_application_platform:4.3.0::el5	All versions	`0:1.0.0-5.GA_CP07_patch_01.1.ep1.el5`
`jbossws-common` Red Hat:jboss_enterprise_application_platform:5::el4	All versions	`0:1.1.0-4.SP7_patch_02.1.ep5.el4`
`jbossws-common` Red Hat:jboss_enterprise_application_platform:5::el5	All versions	`0:1.1.0-4.SP7_patch_02.1.ep5.el5`
`jbossws-common` Red Hat:jboss_enterprise_application_platform:5::el6	All versions	`0:1.1.0-4.SP7_patch_02.1.ep5.el6`
`jbossws-common` Red Hat:jboss_enterprise_web_platform:5::el5	All versions	`0:1.1.0-4.SP7_patch_02.1.ep5.el5`
`jbossws-common` Red Hat:jboss_enterprise_web_platform:5::el6	All versions	`0:1.1.0-4.SP7_patch_02.1.ep5.el6`

Products include Hp Network Node Manager I, Redhat Jboss Communications Platform, Redhat Jboss Enterprise Application Platform, Redhat Jboss Enterprise Brms Platform, Redhat Jboss Enterprise Portal Platform, Redhat Jboss Enterprise Soa Platform and 1 more.

How do I fix CVE-2011-1483?

Upgrade org.jboss.ws:jbossws-common to 2.1.0.Final or later.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2011-1483 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2011-1483 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Redhat Jboss Enterprise Application Platform vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as GHSA-rj4p-7mm6-gm9j, RHSA-2011:1301, RHSA-2011:1303, RHSA-2011:1306, RHSA-2011:1309.