CVE-2001-1057 in Mathematica
Summary
by MITRE
The License Manager (mathlm) for Mathematica 4.0 and 4.1 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (resource exhaustion) by connecting to port 16286 and not disconnecting, which prevents users from making license requests.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 06/27/2021
The vulnerability described in CVE-2001-1057 represents a classic resource exhaustion attack targeting the Mathematica license management system. This issue affects the License Manager component known as mathlm which operates on port 16286 and is part of Wolfram Research's Mathematica 4.0 and 4.1 software implementations. The flaw stems from inadequate connection handling mechanisms within the license server that fail to properly terminate or time out inactive connections, creating a persistent resource leak condition that ultimately leads to service unavailability.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability demonstrates a fundamental flaw in connection management protocols where the mathlm service does not enforce connection timeouts or resource limits for client sessions. When remote attackers establish connections to port 16286 without properly disconnecting, the license manager maintains these connections in an open state indefinitely, consuming system resources such as file descriptors, memory allocations, and network buffers. This behavior directly violates the principle of resource accountability and proper connection lifecycle management that should be enforced by any robust network service implementation.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple denial of service to create significant business disruption for organizations relying on Mathematica licensing. When the license manager becomes overwhelmed with persistent connections, legitimate users attempting to access computational resources are unable to obtain valid license tokens, effectively rendering the software unusable for authorized personnel. This creates cascading effects that can impact research projects, academic institutions, and commercial operations that depend on Mathematica's computational capabilities, as the entire licensing infrastructure becomes compromised through this single point of failure.
From a cybersecurity perspective, this vulnerability aligns with several ATT&CK framework techniques including T1499.004 for network denial of service and T1566.001 for malicious code delivery through network protocols. The flaw also corresponds to CWE-400 which categorizes unchecked resource consumption as a critical weakness in software design. Organizations should implement connection timeout policies, establish maximum connection limits, and deploy network monitoring to detect abnormal connection patterns that could indicate exploitation attempts. Additionally, regular security updates and patch management procedures should be enforced to address such resource management deficiencies in legacy software implementations, while network segmentation and access controls can help limit the attack surface for such services running on well-known ports.