CVE-2023-1436 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.9) CWE-674 vulnerability in org.codehaus.jettison:jettison. 1 public exploit or proof-of-concept reference is indexed, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for org.codehaus.jettison:jettison — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Infinite recursion in Jettison leads to denial of service when creating a crafted JSONArray
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2023-1436.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
org.codehaus.jettison:jettisonReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Maven packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
An infinite recursion is triggered in Jettison when constructing a JSONArray from a Collection that contains a self-reference in one of its elements. This leads to a StackOverflowError exception being thrown.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | org.codehaus.jettison:jettison | all versions | 1.5.4org.codehaus.jettison:jettison:1.5.4 |
Affected Products
jettisonjettison_projectResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for org.codehaus.jettison:jettison, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update org.codehaus.jettison:jettison to 1.5.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-1436 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Stop feeding it untrusted input: reject or quarantine files and payloads from unverified sources until you can upgrade, restrict accepted formats to the ones you actually need, and run the parsing or decoding step in a least-privileged sandbox or short-lived worker so a crash or corrupted read cannot reach the rest of the process.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Migration Toolkit for Runtimes 1 on RHEL 8 | mtr/mtr-web-container-rhel8:1.2-9 | RHSA-2023:7670 |
| MTA-6.2-RHEL-8 | mta/mta-rhel8-operator:6.2.2-3 | RHSA-2024:1027 |
| OCP-Tools-4.13-RHEL-8 | jenkins-2-plugins-0:4.13.1686680473-1.el8 | RHSA-2023:3622 |
| OpenShift Developer Tools and Services for OCP 4.11 | jenkins-2-plugins-0:4.11.1686831822-1.el8 | RHSA-2023:3663 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform | org.codehaus.jettison/jettison:1.5.4.redhat-00002 | RHSA-2023:4509 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.4 for RHEL 8 | eap7-jettison-0:1.5.4-1.redhat_00002.1.el8eap | RHSA-2023:4506 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.4 for RHEL 9 | eap7-jettison-0:1.5.4-1.redhat_00002.1.el9eap | RHSA-2023:4507 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.4 on RHEL 7 | eap7-jettison-0:1.5.4-1.redhat_00002.1.el7eap | RHSA-2023:4505 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-1436 in your dependencies?
Find it across Maven, including transitive dependencies.