CVE-2021-39140 XStream can cause a Denial of Service
Remote attackers can cause denial of service via CPU exhaustion by manipulating input streams in XStream, unless a whitelist is configured.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2021-39140?
CVE-2021-39140 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 23 Aug 2021. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
XStream is a simple library to serialize objects to XML and back again. In affected versions this vulnerability may allow a remote attacker to allocate 100% CPU time on the target system depending on CPU type or parallel execution of such a payload resulting in a denial of service only by manipulating the processed input stream. No user is affected, who followed the recommendation to setup XStream's security framework with a whitelist limited to the minimal required types. XStream 1.4.18 uses no longer a blacklist by default, since it cannot be secured for general purpose.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-39140?
2 open source packages ship an affected version, including com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream. It affects 15 products.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream Maven | All versions | 1.4.18 |
com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream Maven | All versions | 1.4.18 |
Products include Debian Debian Linux, Fedoraproject Fedora, Netapp Snapmanager, Oracle Business Activity Monitoring, Oracle Commerce Guided Search, Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management Elastic Charging Engine and 9 more.
How do I fix CVE-2021-39140?
Upgrade com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream to 1.4.18 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-2021-39140 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-39140 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2021-39140, GHSA-6wf9-jmg9-vxcc, UBUNTU-CVE-2021-39140.