CVE-2019-4141 in IBM
Summary
by MITRE
IBM MQ 7.1.0.0 - 7.1.0.9, 7.5.0.0 - 7.5.0.9, 8.0.0.0 - 8.0.0.11, 9.0.0.0 - 9.0.0.6, 9.1.0.0 - 9.1.0.2, and 9.1.1 - 9.1.2 is vulnerable to a denial of service attack caused by a memory leak in the clustering code. IBM X-Force ID: 158337.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/28/2023
IBM MQ versions 7.1.0.0 through 7.1.0.9, 7.5.0.0 through 7.5.0.9, 8.0.0.0 through 8.0.0.11, 9.0.0.0 through 9.0.0.6, 9.1.0.0 through 9.1.0.2, and 9.1.1 through 9.1.2 contain a critical memory leak vulnerability within their clustering functionality that can lead to system instability and denial of service conditions. This vulnerability specifically affects the clustering code components that manage communication between multiple queue managers in a distributed environment, where the memory allocated for cluster-related operations is not properly released when processing certain cluster messages or maintaining cluster connections. The flaw manifests as a gradual accumulation of memory consumption that eventually exhausts available system resources, causing the affected queue manager processes to crash or become unresponsive. The vulnerability is particularly concerning in production environments where IBM MQ clustering is actively used to maintain high availability and message distribution across multiple systems, as it can silently degrade system performance before ultimately causing complete service disruption.
The technical implementation of this memory leak occurs within the cluster message processing pipeline where temporary memory structures are allocated to handle cluster communication protocols but are not consistently deallocated when message processing completes. This issue is classified as a memory leak under the Common Weakness Enumeration framework as CWE-401, which specifically addresses improper management of memory resources leading to resource exhaustion. The vulnerability can be triggered through normal cluster operations including message routing, cluster node discovery, and cluster synchronization activities, making it particularly dangerous as it does not require special privileges or complex attack vectors to exploit. Attackers can potentially amplify the impact by sending multiple cluster messages or maintaining persistent cluster connections, accelerating the memory consumption rate and reducing the time to successful denial of service. The vulnerability affects the core clustering functionality and impacts all queue manager configurations that utilize cluster capabilities, regardless of the specific operating environment or deployment architecture.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple service interruption to encompass significant business continuity risks in enterprise messaging environments. When the memory leak occurs, affected queue managers may experience progressive performance degradation before complete failure, making it difficult for administrators to identify the root cause through standard monitoring tools that typically focus on CPU or disk usage rather than memory allocation patterns. The clustering functionality that is most affected is the cluster node management system responsible for maintaining cluster membership, routing decisions, and message distribution across the cluster topology. System administrators may observe increasing memory consumption in queue manager processes, followed by process crashes or forced restarts that disrupt message flow and potentially cause message loss or delivery delays. This vulnerability particularly impacts organizations that rely heavily on IBM MQ clustering for disaster recovery, load balancing, or geographic distribution of messaging services, as the memory leak can silently compromise the stability of critical messaging infrastructure.
Organizations should implement immediate mitigations including applying the relevant IBM MQ security patches and fixes released to address this vulnerability, which typically involve memory management improvements in the cluster code and proper deallocation of cluster-related resources. System administrators should also implement enhanced monitoring of memory consumption patterns in queue manager processes, particularly focusing on identifying abnormal memory growth trends that could indicate the presence of this vulnerability. Additionally, implementing cluster connection limits and message rate limiting can help reduce the potential impact if the vulnerability is exploited, while maintaining operational requirements. The mitigation strategy should include regular memory usage audits of queue manager processes and implementing automated alerting when memory consumption exceeds predefined thresholds. Organizations should also consider implementing redundant queue manager configurations to maintain service availability during patch deployment or when memory leak conditions occur, following the principle of least privilege and operational resilience as outlined in cybersecurity frameworks such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. The vulnerability demonstrates the importance of proper resource management in distributed systems and highlights the need for comprehensive testing of clustering functionality in production environments to identify potential memory leak conditions before they can be exploited.