Decompressors can crash the JVM and leak memory content in AircompressorGHSA-973x-65j7-xcf4
HIGHFix: airlift/aircompressor@15e68dfGHSA-973x-65j7-xcf4 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.6) Out-of-bounds Read vulnerability in io.airlift:aircompressor. A fix is available for io.airlift:aircompressor — see the affected versions and patch details below.
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 GHSA-973x-65j7-xcf4.
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
io.airlift:aircompressorReal-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
Aircompressor is a library with ports of the Snappy, LZO, LZ4, and Zstandard compression algorithms to Java. All decompressor implementations of Aircompressor (LZ4, LZO, Snappy, Zstandard) can crash the JVM for certain input, and in some cases also leak the content of other memory of the Java process (which could contain sensitive information). When decompressing certain data, the decompressors try to access memory outside the bounds of the given byte arrays or byte buffers. Because Aircompressor uses the JDK class sun.misc.Unsafe to speed up memory access, no additional bounds checks are performed and this has similar security consequences as out-of-bounds access in C or C++, namely it can lead to non-deterministic behavior or crash the JVM. Users should update to Aircompressor 0.27 or newer where these issues have been fixed. When decompressing data from untrusted users, this can be exploited for a denial-of-service attack by crashing the JVM, or to leak other sensitive information from the Java process. There are no known workarounds for this issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | io.airlift:aircompressor | all versions | 0.27io.airlift:aircompressor:0.27 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for io.airlift:aircompressor, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update io.airlift:aircompressor to 0.27 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-973x-65j7-xcf4 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-973x-65j7-xcf4 in your dependencies?
Find it across Maven, including transitive dependencies.