Eclipse Vert.x Buffer Overflow via Unbounded EOL-Terminated Lines

Executive Summary

This vulnerability affects Eclipse Vert.x Redis client versions between 4.0.0 to 4.5.35 and 5.0.0 to 5.2.2. It allows a malicious Redis server to cause heap exhaustion by sending specially crafted responses like EOL-terminated lines without length prefixes or bulk strings missing CRLF trailers. This leads to unbounded buffer growth or infinite parsing loops, resulting in out-of-memory conditions.

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Detection Guidance

Monitor for unusual memory consumption in applications using Eclipse Vert.x Redis client versions 4.0.0 to 4.5.35 or 5.0.0 to 5.2.2. Check for processes crashing due to out-of-memory errors or excessive CPU usage during Redis communication.

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Impact Analysis

The impact includes potential denial-of-service due to out-of-memory crashes, degraded performance from continuous buffer growth, and system instability. Attackers can exploit this remotely without privileges or user interaction, primarily affecting availability of applications using vulnerable Vert.x Redis client versions.

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Mitigation Strategies

Upgrade Eclipse Vert.x Redis client to versions 5.2.3 or 4.5.36 or later. If upgrading is not immediately possible, implement network-level mitigations such as rate limiting or blocking suspicious Redis server responses.

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