CVE-2016-8734

Description

From CVE.org

Apache Subversion's mod_dontdothat module and HTTP clients 1.4.0 through 1.8.16, and 1.9.0 through 1.9.4 are vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack caused by exponential XML entity expansion. The attack can cause the targeted process to consume an excessive amount of CPU resources or memory.

Mitigation

Only Apache+Subversion servers that have the "DontDoThatConfigFile" configuration option present are affected by this flaw. This option is not enabled in default httpd or mod_dav_svn configuration as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Info alert:Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).

The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score4.46.5N/A
Attack VectorNetworkNetworkN/A
Attack ComplexityHighLowN/A
Privileges RequiredHighLowN/A
User InteractionNoneNoneN/A
ScopeUnchangedUnchangedN/A
ConfidentialityNoneNoneN/A
Integrity ImpactNoneNoneN/A
Availability ImpactHighHighN/A

Vector

Red Hat: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

NVD: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Availability

Technical Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)

If parsed, recursive entity references allow the attacker to expand data exponentially, quickly consuming all system resources.

Acknowledgements

This issue was discovered by Florian Weimer (Red Hat).

Frequently Asked Questions

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