Service interruption via circular-reference unmarshalling
Published Dec 18, 2023 · Updated Nov 21, 2025
Denial of service in Infinispan Protostream allows remote authenticated users to exhaust server memory with a crafted cached object. During unmarshalling, Protostream fails to detect circular object references and recursively traverses the cycle until the thread stack or available memory is exhausted. Cache-write permission and Protostream serialization are required; successful exploitation interrupts the affected service without reported data disclosure or modification.
Summary
What happened
Denial of service in Infinispan Protostream allows remote authenticated users to exhaust server memory with a crafted cached object. During unmarshalling, Protostream fails to detect circular object references and recursively traverses the cycle until the thread stack or available memory is exhausted. Cache-write permission and Protostream serialization are required; successful exploitation interrupts the affected service without reported data disclosure or modification.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2023-5236
- Published
- Dec 18, 2023
- Updated
- Nov 21, 2025
- Vendor
- Red Hat
- Product
- Red Hat Process Automation 7
- Classifications
- CWE-1047, T1499.004
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Dec 18, 2023CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Nov 21, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Affected versions are unavailable in this record. Check the vendor advisory for version and patch details.
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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