CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-37579

Deserialization of Untrusted Data

Published: Sep 09, 2021 | Modified: Sep 17, 2021
CVSS 3.x
9.8
CRITICAL
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
7.5 HIGH
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

The Dubbo Provider will check the incoming request and the corresponding serialization type of this request meet the configuration set by the server. But theres an exception that the attacker can use to skip the security check (when enabled) and reaching a deserialization operation with native java serialization. Apache Dubbo 2.7.13, 3.0.2 fixed this issue by quickly fail when any unrecognized request was found.

Weakness

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

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Dubbo Apache 2.7.0 (including) 2.7.13 (excluding)
Dubbo Apache 3.0.0 (including) 3.0.2 (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