CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-36480

Deserialization of Untrusted Data

Published: Aug 04, 2023 | Modified: Aug 09, 2023
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
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

The Aerospike Java client is a Java application that implements a network protocol to communicate with an Aerospike server. Prior to versions 7.0.0, 6.2.0, 5.2.0, and 4.5.0 some of the messages received from the server contain Java objects that the client deserializes when it encounters them without further validation. Attackers that manage to trick clients into communicating with a malicious server can include especially crafted objects in its responses that, once deserialized by the client, force it to execute arbitrary code. This can be abused to take control of the machine the client is running on. Versions 7.0.0, 6.2.0, 5.2.0, and 4.5.0 contain a patch for this issue.

Weakness

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

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Aerospike_java_client Aerospike * 4.5.0 (excluding)
Aerospike_java_client Aerospike 5.0.0 (including) 5.2.0 (excluding)
Aerospike_java_client Aerospike 6.0.0 (including) 6.2.0 (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