High

Reading specially crafted serializable objects from an untrusted source may cause an infinite loop and denial of service

  • Disclosed: 29.02.2024
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 13:20

Any program on the JVM may read serialized objects via java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(). Reading serialized objects from an untrusted source is inherently unsafe (this affects any program running on any version of the JVM) and is a prerequisite for this vulnerability.

Clojure classes that represent infinite seqs (Cycle, infinite Repeat, and Iterate) do not define hashCode() and use the parent ASeq.hashCode(), which walks the seq to compute the hash, yielding an infinite loop. Classes like java.util.HashMap call hashCode() on keys during deserialization of a serialized map.

The exploit requires:

  1. Crafting a serialized HashMap object with an infinite seq object as a key.
  2. Sending that to a program that reads serialized objects via ObjectInputStream.readObject().

This will cause the program to enter an infinite loop on the reading thread and thus a denial of service (DoS).

The affected Clojure classes (Cycle, Repeat, Iterate) exist in Clojure 1.7.0-1.11.1, 1.12.0-alpha1-1.12.0-alpha8.

Affected software

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PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
Java / Kotlin (Maven) org.clojure:clojure >= 1.7.0, < 1.11.2, >= 1.12.0-alpha1, < 1.12.0-alpha9 1.11.2, 1.12.0-alpha9

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-502
Platform
Java / Kotlin (Maven)
Package
org.clojure:clojure
Disclosed
29.02.2024
Updated
11.10.2026 13:20

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-vr64-r9qj-h27f - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: org.clojure:clojure

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.

Total entries
2
First → latest
01.2024 02.2024
Without a fix
0
Exploited in attacks
0

Severity breakdown

  • Critical 1
  • High 1

Disclosures per year

  1. 2024: 2
  2. 2025: 0
  3. 2026: 0
  1. Reading specially crafted serializable objects from an untrusted source may cause an infinite loop and denial of service this entry
    High · 7.5 CVE-2024-22871 >= 1.7.0, < 1.11.2, >= 1.12.0-alpha1, < 1.12.0-alpha9 1.11.2, 1.12.0-alpha9

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