CVE-2023-34455: snappy-java's unchecked chunk length leads to DoS

7.5 CVSS

Description

snappy-java is a fast compressor/decompressor for Java. Due to use of an unchecked chunk length, an unrecoverable fatal error can occur in versions prior to 1.1.10.1.

The code in the function hasNextChunk in the fileSnappyInputStream.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.

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.

Version 1.1.10.1 contains a patch for this issue.

Classification

CVE ID: CVE-2023-34455

CVSS Base Severity: HIGH

CVSS Base Score: 7.5

Affected Products

Vendor: xerial

Product: snappy-java

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

EPSS Score: 0.23% (probability of being exploited)

EPSS Percentile: 60.91% (scored less or equal to compared to others)

EPSS Date: 2025-02-04 (when was this score calculated)

References

https://github.com/xerial/snappy-java/security/advisories/GHSA-qcwq-55hx-v3vh
https://github.com/xerial/snappy-java/commit/3bf67857fcf70d9eea56eed4af7c925671e8eaea
https://github.com/xerial/snappy-java/blob/05c39b2ca9b5b7b39611529cc302d3d796329611/src/main/java/org/xerial/snappy/SnappyInputStream.java#L388
https://github.com/xerial/snappy-java/blob/master/src/main/java/org/xerial/snappy/SnappyInputStream.java
https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20230818-0009/

Timeline