CVE-2023-42503

Apache Commons Compress: Denial of service via CPU consumption for malformed TAR file

Description

Improper Input Validation, Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in Apache Commons Compress in TAR parsing.This issue affects Apache Commons Compress: from 1.22 before 1.24.0. Users are recommended to upgrade to version 1.24.0, which fixes the issue. A third party can create a malformed TAR file by manipulating file modification times headers, which when parsed with Apache Commons Compress, will cause a denial of service issue via CPU consumption. In version 1.22 of Apache Commons Compress, support was added for file modification times with higher precision (issue # COMPRESS-612 [1]). The format for the PAX extended headers carrying this data consists of two numbers separated by a period [2], indicating seconds and subsecond precision (for example “1647221103.5998539”). The impacted fields are “atime”, “ctime”, “mtime” and “LIBARCHIVE.creationtime”. No input validation is performed prior to the parsing of header values. Parsing of these numbers uses the BigDecimal [3] class from the JDK which has a publicly known algorithmic complexity issue when doing operations on large numbers, causing denial of service (see issue # JDK-6560193 [4]). A third party can manipulate file time headers in a TAR file by placing a number with a very long fraction (300,000 digits) or a number with exponent notation (such as “9e9999999”) within a file modification time header, and the parsing of files with these headers will take hours instead of seconds, leading to a denial of service via exhaustion of CPU resources. This issue is similar to CVE-2012-2098 [5]. [1]: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COMPRESS-612 [2]: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/pax.html#tag_20_92_13_05 [3]: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/math/BigDecimal.html [4]: https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-6560193 [5]: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2012-2098 Only applications using CompressorStreamFactory class (with auto-detection of file types), TarArchiveInputStream and TarFile classes to parse TAR files are impacted. Since this code was introduced in v1.22, only that version and later versions are impacted.

Category

5.5
CVSS
Severity: Medium
CVSS 3.1 •
EPSS 0.01%
Vendor Advisory apache.org
Affected: Apache Software Foundation Apache Commons Compress
Published at:
Updated at:

References

Link Tags
https://lists.apache.org/thread/5xwcyr600mn074vgxq92tjssrchmc93c vendor advisory mailing list url repurposed issue tracking
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20231020-0003/ third party advisory

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the severity of CVE-2023-42503?
CVE-2023-42503 has been scored as a medium severity vulnerability.
How to fix CVE-2023-42503?
To fix CVE-2023-42503, make sure you are using an up-to-date version of the affected component(s) by checking the vendor release notes. As for now, there are no other specific guidelines available.
Is CVE-2023-42503 being actively exploited in the wild?
As for now, there are no information to confirm that CVE-2023-42503 is being actively exploited. According to its EPSS score, there is a ~0% probability that this vulnerability will be exploited by malicious actors in the next 30 days.
What software or system is affected by CVE-2023-42503?
CVE-2023-42503 affects Apache Software Foundation Apache Commons Compress.
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