CVE-2016-0738 OpenStack Object Storage (Swift) allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service

High 7.5 Published 29 Jan 2016 Updated 5 Aug 2024

Remote attackers can cause denial of service in OpenStack Swift by sending interrupted requests to Large Object URLs, exhausting proxy-server resources.

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

What is CVE-2016-0738?

CVE-2016-0738 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in n/a, published on 29 Jan 2016. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

OpenStack Object Storage (Swift) before 2.3.1 (Kilo), 2.4.x, and 2.5.x before 2.5.1 (Liberty) do not properly close server connections, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (proxy-server resource consumption) via a series of interrupted requests to a Large Object URL.

Weakness: CWE-399

Which versions are affected by CVE-2016-0738?

5 open source packages ship an affected version, including swift. It affects 1 product.

Package	Affected	Fixed in
`swift` PyPI	All versions	`2.3.1, 2.5.1`
`swift` PyPI	All versions	`2.3.1`
`swift` PyPI	All versions	`2.3.1`
`swift` PyPI	From `2.4.0`	`2.5.1`
`swift` PyPI	From `2.4.0`	`2.5.1`

Products include Openstack Swift.

How do I fix CVE-2016-0738?

Upgrade swift to a fixed version for your release line: 2.3.1 or 2.5.1.

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-2016-0738 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2016-0738 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2016-0738, GHSA-fxwr-2vxm-cg7p, PYSEC-2026-932, UBUNTU-CVE-2016-0738.