CVE-2022-26477 — systemds
HIGHCVE-2022-26477 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in org.apache.systemds:systemds. A fix is available for org.apache.systemds:systemds — see the affected versions and patch details below.
SystemDS CPU exhaustion vulnerability
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2022-26477 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 378,156 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
org.apache.systemds:systemds🐍systemdsReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Maven, PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
The Security Team noticed that the termination condition of the for loop in the readExternal method is a controllable variable, which, if tampered with, may lead to CPU exhaustion. As a fix, we added an upper bound and termination condition in the read and write logic. We classify it as a "low-priority but useful improvement". SystemDS is a distributed system and needs to serialize/deserialize data but in many code paths (e.g., on Spark broadcast/shuffle or writing to sequence files) the byte stream is anyway protected by additional CRC fingerprints. In this particular case though, the number of decoders is upper-bounded by twice the number of columns, which means an attacker would need to modify two entries in the byte stream in a consistent manner. By adding these checks robustness was strictly improved with almost zero overhead. These code changes are available in versions higher than 2.2.1.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | org.apache.systemds:systemds | all versions | 2.2.2org.apache.systemds:systemds:2.2.2 |
| 🐍PyPI | systemds | all versions | 2.2.2pip install --upgrade 'systemds==2.2.2' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for org.apache.systemds:systemds, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update org.apache.systemds:systemds to 2.2.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-26477 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2022-26477 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2022-26477. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-26477 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2022-26477 across Maven, PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.