CVE-2021-43859 Denial of Service by injecting highly recursive collections or maps in XStream
Remote attackers can cause denial of service by sending highly recursive data to XStream, consuming all CPU 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-2021-43859?
CVE-2021-43859 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 1 Feb 2022. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
XStream is an open source java library to serialize objects to XML and back again. Versions prior to 1.4.19 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. XStream 1.4.19 monitors and accumulates the time it takes to add elements to collections and throws an exception if a set threshold is exceeded. Users are advised to upgrade as soon as possible. Users unable to upgrade may set the NO_REFERENCE mode to prevent recursion. See GHSA-rmr5-cpv2-vgjf for further details on a workaround if an upgrade is not possible.
Weakness: CWE-400
Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-43859?
3 open source packages ship an affected version, including com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream and jenkins. It affects 11 products.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream Maven | All versions | 1.4.19 |
com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream Maven | All versions | 1.4.19 |
jenkins Bitnami | All versions | 2.319.3, 2.334.0 |
Linux distribution packages (6)
xstream SUSE:Linux Enterprise Module for Development Tools 15 SP3 | All versions | 1.4.19-3.18.2 |
xstream SUSE:Linux Enterprise Real Time 15 SP2 | All versions | 1.4.19-3.18.2 |
xstream SUSE:Manager Server Module 4.1 | All versions | 1.4.19-3.18.2 |
xstream SUSE:Manager Server Module 4.2 | All versions | 1.4.19-3.18.2 |
xstream openSUSE:Leap 15.3 | All versions | 1.4.19-3.18.2 |
xstream openSUSE:Tumbleweed | All versions | 1.4.19-1.1 |
Products include Debian Debian Linux, Fedoraproject Fedora, Jenkins Jenkins, Oracle Commerce Guided Search, Oracle Communications Brm - Elastic Charging Engine, Oracle Communications Cloud Native Core Automated Test Suite and 5 more.
How do I fix CVE-2021-43859?
Upgrade com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream to 1.4.19 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-2021-43859 being exploited?
It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2021-43859 exists.
Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux
Sources
Also known as BIT-jenkins-2021-43859, DEBIAN-CVE-2021-43859, DLA-2924-1, GHSA-rmr5-cpv2-vgjf, OESA-2022-1512, OESA-2022-2066 and 4 more.