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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2021-36373 json

Apache Ant TAR archive denial of service vulnerability

published 2021-07-14 5 y ago modified 2026-08-25 2 mo ago also GHSA-q5r4-cfpx-h6fh , EUVD-2021-1834

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.5%
EPSS 2.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 85%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

When reading a specially crafted TAR archive an Apache Ant build can be made to allocate large amounts of memory that finally leads to an out of memory error, even for small inputs. This can be used to disrupt builds using Apache Ant. Apache Ant prior to 1.9.16 and 1.10.11 were affected.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.apache.ant:ant 1.9.16, 1.10.11
  • apache ant 1.9.16, 1.10.11
  • oracle timesten_in-memory_database 11.2.2.8.27
  • ant Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1.10.11-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-36373

  • ant SLE Real Time 15 SP2, SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP3, openSUSE Leap 15.4 +1 more 1.10.7-150200.4.6.1
  • ant-antlr SLE Real Time 15 SP2, SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP3, openSUSE Leap 15.4 +1 more 1.10.7-150200.4.6.1
  • ant-junit SLE Real Time 15 SP2, SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP3, openSUSE Leap 15.4 +1 more 1.10.7-150200.4.6.1
  • ant-junit5 openSUSE Leap 15.4, openSUSE Leap 15.3 1.10.7-150200.4.6.1
  • ant SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5, SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP5 1.9.4-3.9.1
  • ant-antlr SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP5 1.9.4-3.9.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2022:1418-1SUSE-SU-2022:1417-1

  • ant openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.10.12-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:11688-1

  • apache-ant Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +8 more 1.10.11-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2021-36373

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • javapackages-bootstrap CBL-Mariner 2.0 1.5.0-6
  • javapackages-bootstrap Azure Linux 3.0 1.14.0-2

azure linux advisories AZL-25953AZL-34808

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

  • ant Arch Linux 1.10.11-1

arch linux advisories AVG-2151

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-2021-36373 updated cvss 5.5

ant: excessive memory allocation when reading a specially crafted TAR archive

  • Red Hat BPM Suite 6 ant Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 ant, ant-jmf, ant-jsch, ant-trax, ant-antlr, ant-junit, +15 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 ant, ant-jmf, ant-jsch, ant-antlr, ant-junit, ant-swing, +14 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 ant, ant-xz, ant-jmf, ant-lib, ant-jsch, ant-antlr, +16 more
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 ant, ant-xz, ant-jmf, ant-lib, ant-jsch, ant-antlr, +20 more
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Fuse 7 ant Red Hat Integration Camel K 1 ant
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat JBoss BRMS 6 ant Red Hat JBoss Fuse 6 ant
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.11 jenkins
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 jenkins, openshift4/ose-metering-hive
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Software Collections rh-maven36-ant, rh-maven36-ant-xz, rh-maven36-ant-jmf, rh-maven36-ant-lib, rh-maven36-ant-jsch, rh-maven36-ant-antlr, +18 more
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
show 2 more
  • Red Hat RHPAM 7.13.0 async
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2022:5903
  • Red Hat JBoss Data Virtualization 6 ant Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6 ant Red Hat JBoss Fuse Service Works 6 ant Red Hat JBoss Operations Network 3 ant
    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

Exploit prediction

2.53% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 85% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 4.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
GitHub 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.apache.ant:ant
<1.9.16
>=1.10.0, <1.10.11
1.9.16
1.10.11

Affected products

  • Apache Software Foundation Apache Ant

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-130 Improper Handling of Length Parameter Inconsistency

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.