Denial of Service (DoS) Affecting org.apache.pdfbox:pdfbox package, versions [2.0.0, 2.0.24)


0.0
high

Snyk CVSS

    Attack Complexity Low
    Availability High

    Threat Intelligence

    EPSS 0.08% (32nd percentile)
Expand this section
NVD
5.5 medium

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  • Snyk ID SNYK-JAVA-ORGAPACHEPDFBOX-1304912
  • published 13 Jun 2021
  • disclosed 13 Jun 2021
  • credit Chaoyuan Peng

How to fix?

Upgrade org.apache.pdfbox:pdfbox to version 2.0.24 or higher.

Overview

org.apache.pdfbox:pdfbox is an open source Java tool for working with PDF documents.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS) via a crafted PDF file that may trigger an infinite loop during parsing.

Details

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