CVE-2023-42503
5.5 · MEDIUMOverview
CVE-2023-42503 is a medium-severity vulnerability affecting apache commons_compress. It was published on September 14, 2023 and has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 5.5 (MEDIUM).
This vulnerability has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 5.5, rated MEDIUM. It requires local or adjacent network access to exploit. No authentication or special privileges are required for exploitation.
Technical Description
Improper Input Validation, Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in Apache Commons Compress in TAR parsing.This issue affects Apache Commons Compress: from 1.22 before 1.24.0.
Users are recommended to upgrade to version 1.24.0, which fixes the issue.
A third party can create a malformed TAR file by manipulating file modification times headers, which when parsed with Apache Commons Compress, will cause a denial of service issue via CPU consumption.
In version 1.22 of Apache Commons Compress, support was added for file modification times with higher precision (issue # COMPRESS-612 [1]). The format for the PAX extended headers carrying this data consists of two numbers separated by a period [2], indicating seconds and subsecond precision (for example “1647221103.5998539”). The impacted fields are “atime”, “ctime”, “mtime” and “LIBARCHIVE.creationtime”. No input validation is performed prior to the parsing of header values.
Parsing of these numbers uses the BigDecimal [3] cla
Remediation
Check the references section for vendor advisories and patches from apache. Update commons_compress to the latest patched version. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.
Affected Products
| Vendor | Product | Versions | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| apache | commons_compress | >= 1.22, < 1.24.0 | Affected |
Frequently Asked Questions
What is CVE-2023-42503?
CVE-2023-42503 is a medium-severity vulnerability affecting apache commons_compress. It was published on September 14, 2023 and has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 5.5 (MEDIUM).
How severe is CVE-2023-42503?
This vulnerability has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 5.5, rated MEDIUM. It requires local or adjacent network access to exploit. No authentication or special privileges are required for exploitation.
How do I fix or remediate CVE-2023-42503?
Check the references section for vendor advisories and patches from apache. Update commons_compress to the latest patched version. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.
How can CyberStrike help with CVE-2023-42503?
CyberStrike's AI-powered security agents can automatically detect CVE-2023-42503 across your infrastructure using autonomous pentesting, DAST scanning, and HackBrowser. The platform continuously monitors for known vulnerabilities and provides actionable remediation guidance prioritized by real-world exploitability.
How CyberStrike Helps
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