Denial of Service (DoS) Affecting org.apache.santuario:xmlsec package, versions [,1.5.6)


Severity

Recommended
0.0
medium
0
10

CVSS assessment made by Snyk's Security Team. Learn more

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
5.95% (94th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-JAVA-ORGAPACHESANTUARIO-30030
  • published19 Dec 2013
  • disclosed19 Dec 2013
  • creditJames Forshaw

Introduced: 19 Dec 2013

CVE-2013-4517  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-399  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade org.apache.santuario:xmlsec to version 1.5.6 or higher.

Overview

org.apache.santuario:xmlsec is an package to provide implementation of the primary security standards for XML, XML-Signature Syntax and Processing and XML Encryption Syntax and Processing.

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS). When applying Transforms, it allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) via crafted Document Type Definitions (DTDs), related to signatures.

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

CVSS Scores

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