Improper Handling of Length Parameter Inconsistency in Apache Commons Compress - CVE-2021-33517
Published: April 29, 2025
Vulnerability identifier: #VU108024
CSH Severity: High
CVSS v4: 8.7 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2021-33517
CWE-ID: CWE-130
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.
The vulnerability exists because during reading a specially crafted TAR archive, Compress can be made to allocate large amounts of memory that finally leads to an out of memory error even for very small inputs. A remote attacker can trigger the vulnerability and perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.
Affected software
Apache Commons Compress
IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty
IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty
How to mitigate CVE-2021-33517
Install updates from vendor's website.
Apache Commons Compress - update to 1.21
IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty - update to 21.0.0.10
IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty - update to 21.0.0.10