When reading binary Ion data through Amazon.IonDotnet using the RawBinaryReader class, Amazon.IonDotnet does not check the number of bytes read from the underlying stream while deserializing the binary format. If the Ion data is malformed or truncated, this triggers an infinite loop condition that could potentially result in a denial of service. Users should upgrade to Amazon.IonDotnet version 1.3.1 and ensure any forked or derivative code is patched to incorporate the new fixes.
The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently verifying that the resulting data will be valid.
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.