Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2021-35517 in the critical feed json

Apache Commons Compress 1.1 to 1.20 denial of service vulnerability

published 2021-07-13 5 y ago modified 2026-10-08 31 d ago also GHSA-xqfj-vm6h-2x34 , EUVD-2021-1939

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
10.6%
EPSS 10.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 95%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

When reading a specially crafted TAR archive, Compress can be made to allocate large amounts of memory that finally leads to an out of memory error even for very small inputs. This could be used to mount a denial of service attack against services that use Compress' tar package.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.apache.commons:commons-compress 1.21
  • libcommons-compress-java Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1.21-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-35517

  • ovirt-web-ui rhev manager 4.4 1.9.0-1.el8ev
  • ovirt-dependencies rhev manager 4.4 4.5.2-1.el8ev
  • apache-commons-compress rhev manager 4.4 1.21-1.2.el8ev
  • apache-commons-compress-javadoc rhev manager 4.4 1.21-1.2.el8ev

red hat advisories RHSA-2022:5555

  • apache-commons-compress SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP3, SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP2 1.21-3.3.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2021:2612-1

  • apache-commons-compress openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.21-1.2
  • apache-commons-compress openSUSE Leap 15.2 1.21-lp152.2.3.1
  • apache-commons-compress openSUSE Leap 15.3 1.21-3.3.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10618-1openSUSE-SU-2021:1115-1openSUSE-SU-2021:2612-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2021-35517 updated cvss 7.5

apache-commons-compress: excessive memory allocation when reading a specially crafted TAR archive

  • Red Hat Decision Manager 7 apache-commons-compress
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 apache-commons-compress, apache-commons-compress-javadoc Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 apache-commons-compress, apache-commons-compress-javadoc
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Process Automation 7 apache-commons-compress
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Software Collections rh-maven36-apache-commons-compress, rh-maven36-apache-commons-compress-javadoc
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Fuse 7.11
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2022:5532
  • Red Hat RHEL-8-RHEV-S-4.4 - Red Hat Virtualization Engine 4.4 apache-commons-compress 1.21-1.2.el8ev, apache-commons-compress-javadoc 1.21-1.2.el8ev
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2022:5555
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 apache-commons-compress Red Hat RHEL-8-RHEV-S-4.4 - Red Hat Virtualization Engine 4.4 rhvm 4.5.1.2-0.11.el8ev, ovirt-web-ui 1.9.0-1.el8ev, ovirt-engine-dwh 4.5.3-1.el8ev, ovirt-engine 4.5.1.2-0.11.el8ev, postgresql-jdbc 42.2.14-1.el8ev, rhvm-branding-rhv 4.5.0-1.el8ev, +25 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
31 d ago

Exploit prediction

10.61% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 95% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
GitHub 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.apache.commons:commons-compress
<1.21
1.21

Affected products

  • Apache Software Foundation Apache Commons Compress

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-130 Improper Handling of Length Parameter Inconsistency
  • CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.