CVE-2004-2151 in Chatman
Summary
by MITRE
Chatman 1.1.1 RC1 and earlier allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption or application crash) via a very large data size.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 07/13/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2004-2151 affects Chatman versions 1.1.1 RC1 and earlier, representing a significant security flaw that enables remote attackers to execute denial of service attacks against affected systems. This issue stems from inadequate input validation mechanisms within the application's data processing routines, specifically when handling large data payloads. The vulnerability falls under the category of insufficient input validation, which is classified as CWE-20 by the Common Weakness Enumeration standard, making it susceptible to various forms of malicious exploitation.
The technical flaw manifests when the Chatman application receives data packets containing excessively large data sizes that exceed normal operational parameters. Without proper bounds checking or size limitations, the application processes these oversized data structures in a manner that consumes excessive memory resources or triggers critical application errors leading to crashes. The vulnerability exploits the absence of proper data size validation in the application's network input handling mechanisms, allowing attackers to craft malicious payloads that overwhelm the system's memory management capabilities or cause the application to terminate unexpectedly.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability presents a substantial risk to organizations relying on Chatman for communication services. Remote attackers can leverage this weakness to disrupt service availability by consuming system resources or causing application crashes, effectively rendering the chat service unavailable to legitimate users. The impact extends beyond simple service disruption as it can potentially lead to system instability, resource exhaustion, and cascading failures in environments where Chatman operates as a critical communication component. The vulnerability is particularly concerning because it requires no authentication or specialized privileges to exploit, making it accessible to any remote attacker with network access to the affected system.
The attack surface for this vulnerability encompasses any network endpoint where Chatman is deployed and accessible to external networks. Attackers can exploit this weakness by sending specially crafted data packets with oversized payloads that trigger memory allocation failures or application crashes. The exploitation process typically involves establishing a connection to the vulnerable service and transmitting data exceeding acceptable size limits, which causes the application to either consume all available memory resources or encounter processing errors that result in termination. This type of attack aligns with the ATT&CK framework's denial of service tactics, specifically targeting availability as a core objective.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2004-2151 should focus on implementing proper input validation and size limiting mechanisms within the Chatman application. Organizations should immediately upgrade to patched versions of Chatman that address the input validation deficiencies and implement network-level restrictions to limit data transfer sizes. System administrators should configure proper resource limits and monitoring to detect unusual memory consumption patterns that may indicate exploitation attempts. Additionally, network segmentation and access controls should be implemented to restrict unauthorized access to Chatman services, while regular security assessments should verify that input validation mechanisms are properly configured to prevent similar vulnerabilities from emerging in other applications. The remediation process should include comprehensive testing to ensure that legitimate data processing operations continue to function while preventing the exploitation of this memory consumption vulnerability.