CVE-2023-51079 — A long execution time can occur in the ParseTools

A long execution time can occur in the ParseTools.subCompileExpression method in MVEL 2.5.0.Final because of many Java class lookups. NOTE: the vendor disputes this because "the only thing that you could expect is that the parser will take a crazy amount of time to complete

01What is this vulnerability?

A long execution time can occur in the ParseTools.subCompileExpression method in MVEL 2.5.0.Final because of many Java class lookups. NOTE: the vendor disputes this because "the only thing that you could expect is that the parser will take a crazy amount of time to complete its task."

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
n	a / n/a	n/a

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2023-12-27T00:00:00.000Z
• Last modified: 2024-08-02T22:32:09.101Z

09References

• github.com — https://github.com/mvel/mvel/issues/348
• github.com — https://github.com/mvel/mvel/issues/348#issuecomment-1874047271