CVE-2021-36373 Apache Ant TAR archive denial of service vulnerability
Attackers can cause denial of service in Apache Ant builds by providing specially crafted TAR archives that trigger excessive memory allocation.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- A user has to click or open something
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2021-36373?
CVE-2021-36373 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Oracle Agile Product Lifecycle Management, published on 14 Jul 2021. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.
Official description
When reading a specially crafted TAR archive an Apache Ant build can be made to allocate large amounts of memory that finally leads to an out of memory error, even for small inputs. This can be used to disrupt builds using Apache Ant. Apache Ant prior to 1.9.16 and 1.10.11 were affected.
Weakness: CWE-130
Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-36373?
4 open source packages ship an affected version, including org.apache.ant:ant. It affects 32 products.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
org.apache.ant:ant Maven | All versions | 1.9.16 |
org.apache.ant:ant Maven | All versions | 1.9.16 |
org.apache.ant:ant Maven | From 1.10.0 | 1.10.11 |
org.apache.ant:ant Maven | From 1.10.0 | 1.10.11 |
Products include Apache Ant, Oracle Agile Product Lifecycle Management, Oracle Banking Trade Finance, Oracle Banking Treasury Management, Oracle Communications Cloud Native Core Automated Test Suite, Oracle Communications Cloud Native Core Binding Support Function and 26 more.
How do I fix CVE-2021-36373?
Upgrade org.apache.ant:ant to a fixed version for your release line: 1.9.16 or 1.10.11.
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-2021-36373 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-36373 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Oracle Agile Product Lifecycle Management
- CVE-2020-11979 Code injection in Apache Ant
- CVE-2026-78254 Apache Ant: Path traversal in ftp and scp tasks allows arbitrary file write
- CVE-2020-1945 Sensitive Data Exposure in Apache Ant
- CVE-2021-36374 Apache Ant ZIP, and ZIP based, archive denial of service vulerability
All Oracle Agile Product Lifecycle Management vulnerabilities
Sources
Also known as AZL-25953, AZL-34808, CLEANSTART-2025-YD79563, DEBIAN-CVE-2021-36373, GHSA-q5r4-cfpx-h6fh, MINI-3pg8-r5jw-c42f and 3 more.