CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-32836

Deserialization of Untrusted Data

Published: Sep 09, 2021 | Modified: Apr 25, 2022
CVSS 3.x
8.1
HIGH
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
6.8 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

ZStack is open source IaaS(infrastructure as a service) software. In ZStack before versions 3.10.12 and 4.1.6 there is a pre-auth unsafe deserialization vulnerability in the REST API. An attacker in control of the request body will be able to provide both the class name and the data to be deserialized and therefore will be able to instantiate an arbitrary type and assign arbitrary values to its fields. This issue may lead to a Denial Of Service. If a suitable gadget is available, then an attacker may also be able to exploit this vulnerability to gain pre-auth remote code execution. For additional details see the referenced GHSL-2021-087.

Weakness

The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently verifying that the resulting data will be valid.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Zstack Zstack * 3.10.12 (excluding)
Zstack Zstack 4.1.0 (including) 4.1.6 (excluding)

Extended Description

It is often convenient to serialize objects for communication or to save them for later use. However, deserialized data or code can often be modified without using the provided accessor functions if it does not use cryptography to protect itself. Furthermore, any cryptography would still be client-side security – which is a dangerous security assumption. Data that is untrusted can not be trusted to be well-formed. When developers place no restrictions on “gadget chains,” or series of instances and method invocations that can self-execute during the deserialization process (i.e., before the object is returned to the caller), it is sometimes possible for attackers to leverage them to perform unauthorized actions, like generating a shell.

Potential Mitigations

  • Make fields transient to protect them from deserialization.
  • An attempt to serialize and then deserialize a class containing transient fields will result in NULLs where the transient data should be. This is an excellent way to prevent time, environment-based, or sensitive variables from being carried over and used improperly.

References