CVE-2021-22553 Heap Memory exhaustion in Gerrit

Medium 6.5 Published 17 Feb 2021 Updated 16 Sep 2024

Attackers can exhaust heap memory by creating unexpired sessions via git operations, causing denial of service on Gerrit servers.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Over the internet
Victim action needed: A user has to click or open something
Fix: None listed

What is CVE-2021-22553?

CVE-2021-22553 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Google LLC Gerrit, published on 17 Feb 2021. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

Any git operation is passed through Jetty and a session is created. No expiry is set for the session and Jetty does not automatically dispose of the session. Over multiple git actions, this can lead to a heap memory exhaustion for Gerrit servers. We recommend upgrading Gerrit to any of the versions listed above.

Weakness: CWE-772, CWE-400

Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-22553?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Google Gerrit.

How do I fix CVE-2021-22553?

No fix has been published for CVE-2021-22553 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

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-2021-22553 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-22553 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

Also known as GHSA-f46h-mh94-f4w2.