Skip to content

XStream can cause a Denial of Service by injecting deeply nested objects raising a stack overflow

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Dec 24, 2022 in x-stream/xstream • Updated Jan 7, 2023

Package

maven com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream (Maven)

Affected versions

< 1.4.20

Patched versions

1.4.20

Description

Impact

The vulnerability may allow a remote attacker to terminate the application with a stack overflow error resulting in a denial of service only by manipulating the processed input stream.

Patches

XStream 1.4.20 handles the stack overflow and raises an InputManipulationException instead.

Workarounds

The only solution is to catch the StackOverflowError in the client code calling XStream.

References

See full information about the nature of the vulnerability and the steps to reproduce it in XStream's documentation for CVE-2022-40151.

Credits

The vulnerability was discovered and reported by Henry Lin of the Google OSS-Fuzz team.

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

References

@joehni joehni published to x-stream/xstream Dec 24, 2022
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Dec 30, 2022
Reviewed Dec 30, 2022
Last updated Jan 7, 2023

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS score

0.841%
(82nd percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2022-40151

GHSA ID

GHSA-f8cc-g7j8-xxpm

Source code

Loading Checking history
See something to contribute? Suggest improvements for this vulnerability.