CVE-2023-5685 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in org.jboss.xnio:xnio-api. A fix is available for org.jboss.xnio:xnio-api — see the affected versions and patch details below.
XNIO denial of service vulnerability
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- 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-2023-5685.
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.jboss.xnio:xnio-apiReal-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 XNIO. The XNIO NotifierState that can cause a Stack Overflow Exception when the chain of notifier states becomes problematically large can lead to uncontrolled resource management and a possible denial of service (DoS). Version 3.8.14.Final is expected to contain a fix.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | org.jboss.xnio:xnio-api | all versions | 3.8.14.Finalorg.jboss.xnio:xnio-api:3.8.14.Final |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for org.jboss.xnio:xnio-api, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update org.jboss.xnio:xnio-api to 3.8.14.Final or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-5685 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Constrain what reaches the vulnerable code: limit the size and shape of untrusted input, isolate the affected component in a sandboxed or least-privileged process, and enable the platform's memory-safety mitigations (ASLR, stack protector, hardened allocator) so an out-of-bounds access is more likely to fail closed than to be exploitable.
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.
Red Hat rates this vulnerability as an Important impact as the uncontrolled resource consumption may lead to Denial of Service (DoS). This might be intentioned by an attacker who is looking to jeopardize an environment.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat build of Apache Camel 4.4.0 for Spring Boot | xnio | RHSA-2024:2707 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform | org.jboss.xnio/xnio-nio:3.8.11.SP1-redhat-00001 | RHSA-2023:7641 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.1 EUS for RHEL 7 | eap7-apache-cxf-0:3.1.16-3.SP1_redhat_00001.1.ep7.el7 | RHSA-2024:10208 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.3 EUS for RHEL 7 | eap7-apache-cxf-0:3.4.10-1.SP1_redhat_00001.1.el7eap | RHSA-2024:10207 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.4 for RHEL 8 | eap7-jboss-xnio-base-0:3.8.11-1.SP1_redhat_00001.1.el8eap | RHSA-2023:7638 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.4 for RHEL 9 | eap7-jboss-xnio-base-0:3.8.11-1.SP1_redhat_00001.1.el9eap | RHSA-2023:7639 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.4 on RHEL 7 | eap7-jboss-xnio-base-0:3.8.11-1.SP1_redhat_00001.1.el7eap | RHSA-2023:7637 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-5685 in your dependencies?
Find it across Maven, including transitive dependencies.