Neethi Policy Reference Exhaustion DoS Vulnerability

Executive Summary

This vulnerability involves a denial of service attack where a small WS-Policy document with repeated policy references causes Neethi to exponentially re-expand these references during normalization. This leads to excessive CPU and memory consumption.

Useful 0 Not Useful 0

Detection Guidance

Detecting this vulnerability requires checking the version of Apache Neethi installed on your system. If you are running a version before 3.2.4, your system is vulnerable. Use the command 'mvn dependency:tree' in your project directory to check the Neethi version. Alternatively, inspect the Neethi JAR file's manifest or use 'find / -name "neethi*.jar" 2>/dev/null' to locate and check the version.

Useful 0 Not Useful 0

Impact Analysis

The vulnerability can cause system slowdowns or crashes due to high resource usage, potentially disrupting services that rely on Neethi for policy processing.

Useful 0 Not Useful 0

Compliance Impact

This vulnerability causes denial of service through excessive CPU and memory consumption, which could disrupt services handling sensitive data. For GDPR, this may impact availability of personal data processing systems, potentially violating Article 32 requirements for security and integrity. For HIPAA, it could disrupt systems handling protected health information, affecting availability requirements under the Security Rule.

Useful 0 Not Useful 0

Mitigation Strategies

Upgrade to Apache Neethi version 3.2.4 or later to address the exponential CPU and memory consumption issue caused by repeated policy references in WS-Policy documents.

Useful 0 Not Useful 0