CVE-2023-5236 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) vulnerability in org.infinispan.protostream:protostream. A fix is available for org.infinispan.protostream:protostream — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Infinispan circular object references causes out of memory errors
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2023-5236.
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.infinispan.protostream:protostreamReal-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
A flaw was found in Infinispan, which does not detect circular object references when unmarshalling. An authenticated attacker with sufficient permissions could insert a maliciously constructed object into the cache and use it to cause out of memory errors and achieve a denial of service.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | org.infinispan.protostream:protostream | all versions | 4.6.2.Finalorg.infinispan.protostream:protostream:4.6.2.Final |
Affected Products
infinispaninfinispandata gridredhatjboss data gridredhatDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for org.infinispan.protostream:protostream, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update org.infinispan.protostream:protostream to 4.6.2.Final or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-5236 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Data Grid 8.4.4 | infinispan-server | RHSA-2023:5396 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-5236 in your dependencies?
Find it across Maven, including transitive dependencies.