# CVE-2023-5236: Infinispan: circular reference on marshalling leads to dos

> An authenticated attacker can cause a denial of service by inserting a malicious object with circular references into the Infinispan cache.

- **Severity:** Medium 4.4 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** An administrator
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 18 Dec 2023
- **Updated:** 21 Nov 2025
- **Also known as:** GHSA-488m-w9fp-5mm2

## What is CVE-2023-5236?

CVE-2023-5236 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Red Hat Data Grid 8, published on 18 Dec 2023. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

A flaw was found in Infinispan, which does not detect circular object references when unmarshalling. An authenticated attacker with sufficient permissions could insert a maliciously constructed object into the cache and use it to cause out of memory errors and achieve a denial of service.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-5236?

2 open source packages ship an affected version, including org.infinispan.protostream:protostream. It affects 3 products.


| Package | Ecosystem | Affected | Fixed in |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `org.infinispan.protostream:protostream` | Maven | All versions | 4.6.2.Final |
| `org.infinispan.protostream:protostream` | Maven | All versions | 4.6.2.Final |

Products: Infinispan Infinispan, Redhat Data Grid, Redhat Jboss Data Grid.

## How do I fix CVE-2023-5236?

Upgrade org.infinispan.protostream:protostream to 4.6.2.Final or later.

## Is CVE-2023-5236 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-5236 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Red Hat Data Grid 8

- [CVE-2018-1131](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2018-1131/): Deserialization of Untrusted Data in Infinispan (high 8.8)
- [CVE-2017-15089](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-15089/): Deserialization of Untrusted Data in Infinispan (high 8.8)
- [CVE-2019-10174](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-10174/): Use of Externally-Controlled Input to Select Classes or Code in Infinispan (high 7.5)
- [CVE-2023-5384](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-5384/): Infinispan: credentials returned from configuration as clear text (high 7.2)
- [CVE-2023-3628](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-3628/): Infispan: rest bulk ops don't check permissions (medium 6.5)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2023-5236 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2023-5236 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Red Hat Data Grid 8, published on 18 Dec 2023. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-5236 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected packages and fixed versions:
- org.infinispan.protostream:protostream (Maven): affected all versions; fixed in 4.6.2.Final
- org.infinispan.protostream:protostream (Maven): affected all versions; fixed in 4.6.2.Final

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-5236/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-5236/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-5236
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-5236
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2023-5236

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-5236/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.