CVE-2022-3171 Memory handling vulnerability in ProtocolBuffers Java core and lite

What is CVE-2022-3171?

CVE-2022-3171 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Fedoraproject Fedora, published on 12 Oct 2022. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

A parsing issue with binary data in protobuf-java core and lite versions prior to 3.21.7, 3.20.3, 3.19.6 and 3.16.3 can lead to a denial of service attack. Inputs containing multiple instances of non-repeated embedded messages with repeated or unknown fields causes objects to be converted back-n-forth between mutable and immutable forms, resulting in potentially long garbage collection pauses. We recommend updating to the versions mentioned above.

Weakness: CWE-20

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-3171?

40 open source packages ship an affected version, including com.google.protobuf:protobuf-java, com.google.protobuf:protobuf-javalite and com.google.protobuf:protobuf-kotlin. It affects 6 products.

Products include Fedoraproject Fedora, Google Google-Protobuf, Google Protobuf-Java, Google Protobuf-Javalite, Google Protobuf-Kotlin, Google Protobuf-Kotlin-Lite.

How do I fix CVE-2022-3171?

Upgrade com.google.protobuf:protobuf-java to a fixed version for your release line: 3.16.3, 3.19.6, 3.20.3 or 3.21.7.

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-2022-3171 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-3171 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Fedoraproject Fedora

• CVE-2024-4577 PHP-CGI OS Command Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2021-39226 Grafana Authentication Bypass Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2019-5544 VMware ESXi and Horizon DaaS OpenSLP Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-4947 Google Chromium V8 Type Confusion Exploited Critical 9.6
• CVE-2024-4671 Google Chromium Visuals Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.6

All Fedoraproject Fedora vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as CLEANSTART-2026-AV57631, CLEANSTART-2026-FD57145, DEBIAN-CVE-2022-3171, ECHO-7811-b7c6-2509, GHSA-h4h5-3hr4-j3g2, MINI-243g-q5cw-w5hf and 6 more.