Denial of Service (DoS) Affecting org.apache.xmlrpc:xmlrpc package, versions [3.0,3.1.4)

org.apache.xmlrpc:xmlrpc is a Java implementation of XML-RPC, a popular protocol that uses XML over HTTP to implement remote procedure calls.

Affected versions of the package are vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS). By default ws-xmlrpc supports Content-Encoding HTTP header. When sending Content-Encoding: gzip header, the body is not gzipped, and an error returns. An attacker may create a specially crafted compressed file and cause a Denial of Service attack, also known as decompression bomb attack.

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

• OSS Security
• 0ang3el Blog