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Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2021-43859 json

Denial of Service by injecting highly recursive collections or maps in XStream

published 2022-02-01 4 y ago modified 2026-09-08 2 mo ago also BIT-jenkins-2021-43859 , EUVD-2022-1176 , GHSA-rmr5-cpv2-vgjf

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
7.9%
EPSS 7.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 94%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

XStream is an open source java library to serialize objects to XML and back again. Versions prior to 1.4.19 may allow a remote attacker to allocate 100% CPU time on the target system depending on CPU type or parallel execution of such a payload resulting in a denial of service only by manipulating the processed input stream. XStream 1.4.19 monitors and accumulates the time it takes to add elements to collections and throws an exception if a set threshold is exceeded. Users are advised to upgrade as soon as possible. Users unable to upgrade may set the NO_REFERENCE mode to prevent recursion. See GHSA-rmr5-cpv2-vgjf for further details on a workaround if an upgrade is not possible.

Patch / fix

  • maven com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream 1.4.19
  • bitnami jenkins 2.319.3, 2.334.0
  • jenkins jenkins 2.319.3, 2.334
  • xstream xstream 1.4.19
  • oracle communications_brm_-_elastic_charging_engine 12.0.0.4.6
  • libxstream-java Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1.4.19-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-43859

  • jenkins openshift 3.11 2.319.3.1650348949-1.el7
  • jenkins-2-plugins openshift 3.11 3.11.1650371376-1.el7

red hat advisories RHSA-2022:1420

  • xstream SLE Real Time 15 SP2, SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP3, Manager Server Module 4.2 +1 more 1.4.19-3.18.2

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2022:0817-1

  • xstream openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.4.19-1.1
  • xstream openSUSE Leap 15.3 1.4.19-3.18.2

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:11809-1openSUSE-SU-2022:0817-1

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-2021-43859 updated cvss 7.5

xstream: Injecting highly recursive collections or maps can cause a DoS

  • Red Hat BPM Suite 6 xstream
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Data Grid 8 xstream
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat Decision Manager 7 xstream
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 xstream, xstream-javadoc
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Integration Camel K 1 xstream Red Hat Integration Camel Quarkus 1 xstream
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat JBoss A-MQ 6 xstream Red Hat JBoss BRMS 5 xstream Red Hat JBoss BRMS 6 xstream Red Hat JBoss Data Grid 7 xstream Red Hat JBoss Data Virtualization 6 xstream Red Hat JBoss Fuse 6 xstream
    +2 more products
    Red Hat JBoss Fuse Service Works 6 xstream Red Hat JBoss SOA Platform 5 xstream
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 jenkins Red Hat Process Automation 7 xstream
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat Fuse 7.11
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2022:5532
show 3 more
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.11 jenkins 2.319.3.1650348949-1.el7
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2022:1420
  • Red Hat RHINT Camel-Q 2.7
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2022:5606
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.11 prometheus 3.11.685-1.g99aae51.el7, jenkins-2-plugins 3.11.1650371376-1.el7, openshift-kuryr 3.11.685-1.g0c4bf66.el7, openshift-kuryr-cni 3.11.685-1.g0c4bf66.el7, atomic-openshift 3.11.685-1.git.0.7faaeaa.el7, openshift-ansible 3.11.685-1.git.0.a9090ac.el7, +35 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
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
18 mo ago

Exploit prediction

7.93% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 94% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/x-stream/xstream/security/advisories/GHSA-rmr5-cpv2-vgjf referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • x-stream.github.io https://x-stream.github.io/CVE-2021-43859.html referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
GitHub 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
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
OSV 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 com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream
<1.4.19
1.4.19
bitnami jenkins
<2.319.3
>=2.321.0, <2.334.0
2.319.3
2.334.0

Affected products

  • x-stream xstream

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
  • CWE-502 Deserialization of Untrusted Data
Technology feeds

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.