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Stack-based Buffer OverflowWeakness · CWE-121

CVE-2024-47072

HIGH · 7.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2024-11-08
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
84/100
Remediation priority · High
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
XStream is a simple library to serialize objects to XML and back again. This vulnerability may allow a remote attacker to terminate the application with a stack overflow error resulting in a denial of service only by manipulating the processed input stream when XStream is configured to use the BinaryStreamDriver. XStream 1.4.21 has been patched to detect the manipulation in the binary input stream causing the the stack overflow and raises an InputManipulationException instead. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade may catch the StackOverflowError in the client code calling XStream if XStream is configured to use the BinaryStreamDriver.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-121

Data overflows a fixed-size buffer allocated on the stack, overwriting adjacent stack memory — including saved return addresses — which is the classic route to redirecting execution into attacker-supplied code. Crafted input is all it takes. Remediation is strict length checks, safe bounded string and memory functions, and modern stack-protection mitigations.

General guidance for the stack-based buffer overflow class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Patch available Apply the vendor patch
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix Moderate confidence

XStream 1.4.21 or later

  1. Upgrade XStream to version 1.4.21 or later
  2. If using Maven/Gradle, update the dependency: for Maven, change the xstream version in pom.xml to 1.4.21 or higher
  3. After upgrading, rebuild and redeploy your application
  4. Verify the upgrade does not break existing functionality
  5. As an alternative mitigation (if upgrade is not possible), wrap XStream calls in a try-catch block to catch StackOverflowError when using BinaryStreamDriver
Caveat Likely minimal - this is primarily a denial-of-service fix; however, test thoroughly as the InputManipulationException may now be thrown in scenarios that previously caused stack overflow

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2024-47072 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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What this is

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