Vulnerability · Published Apr 28, 2021 · Assigned by GitHub_M

CVE-2021-29482denial of service in github.com/ulikunitz/xz

High 7.5

In plain English

A high-severity infinite loop in xz from ulikunitz. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 1.4% (higher than 73% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.

Severity (CVSS 3.1)7.5High
Exploit odds (30 days)1.4%top 26.7% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsnot in CISA KEV
Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

xz is a compression and decompression library focusing on the xz format completely written in Go. The function readUvarint used to read the xz container format may not terminate a loop provide malicous input. The problem has been fixed in release v0.5.8. As a workaround users can limit the size of the compressed file input to a reasonable size for their use case. The standard library had recently the same issue and got the CVE-2020-16845 allocated.

Affected packages & fixed versions

EcosystemPackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian:12golang-github-ulikunitz-xz0.5.6-2DEBIAN-CVE-2021-29482
Debian:13golang-github-ulikunitz-xz0.5.6-2DEBIAN-CVE-2021-29482
Debian:14golang-github-ulikunitz-xz0.5.6-2DEBIAN-CVE-2021-29482
Gogithub.com/ulikunitz/xz0.5.8GHSA-25xm-hr59-7c27
Gogithub.com/ulikunitz/xz0.5.8GO-2020-0016
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSgolang-github-ulikunitz-xzno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2021-29482
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSgolang-github-ulikunitz-xzno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2021-29482
Ubuntu:25.10golang-github-ulikunitz-xzno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2021-29482
Ubuntu:26.04:LTSgolang-github-ulikunitz-xzno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2021-29482

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
ulikunitz xz < 0.5.8

Weakness: CWE-835 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

References