Denial of Service (DoS) Affecting com.google.protobuf:protobuf-java package, versions [,3.16.1) [3.17.0,3.18.2) [3.19.0,3.19.2)

com.google.protobuf:protobuf-java is a Google's language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS). An issue in protobuf-java allowed the interleaving of com.google.protobuf.UnknownFieldSet fields in such a way that would be processed out of order. A small malicious payload can occupy the parser for several minutes by creating large numbers of short-lived objects that cause frequent, repeated pauses.

Note: Protobuf javalite users are not affected.

Denial of Service (DoS) describes a family of attacks, all aimed at making a system inaccessible to its intended and legitimate users.

Unlike other vulnerabilities, DoS attacks usually do not aim at breaching security. Rather, they are focused on making websites and services unavailable to genuine users resulting in downtime.

One popular Denial of Service vulnerability is DDoS (a Distributed Denial of Service), an attack that attempts to clog network pipes to the system by generating a large volume of traffic from many machines.

When it comes to open source libraries, DoS vulnerabilities allow attackers to trigger such a crash or crippling of the service by using a flaw either in the application code or from the use of open source libraries.

Two common types of DoS vulnerabilities:

• High CPU/Memory Consumption- An attacker sending crafted requests that could cause the system to take a disproportionate amount of time to process. For example, commons-fileupload:commons-fileupload.

• Crash - An attacker sending crafted requests that could cause the system to crash. For Example, npm ws package

• Chromium Bugs
• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Commit
• GitHub Commit
• Google Cloud Security Bulletin