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High

XStream can cause a Denial of Service by injecting deeply nested objects raising a stack overflow

  • Disclosed: 30.12.2022
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 11:21

Impact

The vulnerability may allow a remote attacker to terminate the application with a stack overflow error resulting in a denial of service only by manipulating the processed input stream.

Patches

XStream 1.4.20 handles the stack overflow and raises an InputManipulationException instead.

Workarounds

The only solution is to catch the StackOverflowError in the client code calling XStream.

References

See full information about the nature of the vulnerability and the steps to reproduce it in XStream's documentation for CVE-2022-40151.

Credits

The vulnerability was discovered and reported by Henry Lin of the Google OSS-Fuzz team.

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

Affected software

Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.

PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
Java / Kotlin (Maven) com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream < 1.4.20 1.4.20

References

CVSS score 7.5/10
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-121, CWE-502, CWE-787
Platform
Java / Kotlin (Maven)
Package
com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream
Disclosed
30.12.2022
Updated
11.10.2026 11:21

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-f8cc-g7j8-xxpm - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream

All published vulnerabilities of this package (Java / Kotlin (Maven)), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.

All (37) in the archive
Total entries
37
First → latest
05.2019 11.2024
Without a fix
0
Exploited in attacks
1

Severity breakdown

  • Critical 2
  • High 22
  • Medium 13

Disclosures per year

Severity:
  1. XStream is vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack due to stack overflow from a manipulated binary input stream
    High · 7.5 CVE-2024-47072 < 1.4.21 1.4.21
  2. XStream can cause a Denial of Service by injecting deeply nested objects raising a stack overflow this entry
    High · 7.5 CVE-2022-40151 < 1.4.20 1.4.20
  3. XStream can cause Denial of Service via stack overflow
    High · 8.2 CVE-2022-41966 < 1.4.20 1.4.20
  4. Denial of Service by injecting highly recursive collections or maps in XStream
    High · 7.5 CVE-2021-43859 < 1.4.19 1.4.19
  5. XStream is vulnerable to an Arbitrary Code Execution attack
    High · 8.5 CVE-2021-39139 < 1.4.18 1.4.18
  6. XStream is vulnerable to an Arbitrary Code Execution attack
    High · 8.5 CVE-2021-39141 < 1.4.18 1.4.18
  7. XStream is vulnerable to a Remote Command Execution attack
    High · 8.5 Exploited in attacks CVE-2021-39144 < 1.4.18 1.4.18
  8. XStream is vulnerable to an Arbitrary Code Execution attack
    High · 8.5 CVE-2021-39145 < 1.4.18 1.4.18
  9. XStream is vulnerable to an Arbitrary Code Execution attack
    High · 8.5 CVE-2021-39146 < 1.4.18 1.4.18
  10. XStream is vulnerable to an Arbitrary Code Execution attack
    High · 8.5 CVE-2021-39147 < 1.4.18 1.4.18
  11. XStream is vulnerable to an Arbitrary Code Execution attack
    High · 8.5 CVE-2021-39148 < 1.4.18 1.4.18
  12. XStream is vulnerable to an Arbitrary Code Execution attack
    High · 8.5 CVE-2021-39149 < 1.4.18 1.4.18
  13. A Server-Side Forgery Request can be activated unmarshalling with XStream to access data streams from an arbitrary URL referencing a resource in an intranet or the local host
    High · 8.5 CVE-2021-39150 < 1.4.18 1.4.18
  14. XStream is vulnerable to an Arbitrary Code Execution attack
    High · 8.5 CVE-2021-39151 < 1.4.18 1.4.18
  15. A Server-Side Forgery Request can be activated unmarshalling with XStream to access data streams from an arbitrary URL referencing a resource in an intranet or the local host
    High · 8.5 CVE-2021-39152 < 1.4.18 1.4.18
  16. XStream is vulnerable to an Arbitrary Code Execution attack
    High · 8.5 CVE-2021-39153 < 1.4.18 1.4.18
  17. XStream is vulnerable to an Arbitrary Code Execution attack
    High · 8.5 CVE-2021-39154 < 1.4.18 1.4.18
  18. XStream is vulnerable to a Remote Command Execution attack
    High · 7.5 CVE-2021-29505 < 1.4.17 1.4.17
  19. XStream can cause a Denial of Service.
    High · 7.5 CVE-2021-21341 < 1.4.16 1.4.16
  20. XStream can be used for Remote Code Execution
    High · 8.0 CVE-2020-26217 < 1.4.14-java7 1.4.14-java7
  21. Denial of service in XStream
    High · 7.5 CVE-2017-7957 < 1.4.10 1.4.10
  22. XML External Entity Injection in XStream
    High · 7.5 CVE-2016-3674 < 1.4.9 1.4.9
  23. Deserialization of Untrusted Data and Code Injection in xstream
    Critical · 9.8 CVE-2019-10173 >= 1.4.10, < 1.4.11 1.4.11
  24. Command Injection in Xstream
    Critical · 9.8 CVE-2013-7285 < 1.4.7, >= 1.4.10, < 1.4.11 1.4.7, 1.4.11

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