CVE-2026-101180 in HarmonyOS
Summary
by MITRE • 11/02/2026
DoS vulnerability in the file parsing module. Impact: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may affect availability.
Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.
Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/02/2026
The identified security issue resides within the file parsing subsystem of the application, presenting a significant risk to system availability through Denial of Service conditions. This class of vulnerabilities typically arises when software fails to adequately validate or sanitize input data before processing it, allowing an attacker to craft maliciously formatted files that trigger unintended behavior during ingestion. In this specific instance, the flaw is located in how the parser handles certain file structures or content patterns, leading to resource exhaustion, infinite loops, or memory corruption events that cause the service to become unresponsive or crash entirely. The core technical deficiency lies in the absence of robust boundary checks and state management within the parsing logic, which permits malformed inputs to bypass expected processing constraints and consume disproportionate amounts of computational resources such as CPU cycles or memory allocation.
From a threat modeling perspective, this vulnerability aligns with CWE-20 Improper Input Validation and often falls under CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption when it leads to resource exhaustion. The operational impact is strictly limited to availability rather than confidentiality or integrity, meaning that while the data itself may remain uncompromised, the service becomes inaccessible to legitimate users during an attack window. This can result in significant business disruption, loss of productivity, and potential SLA violations for organizations relying on continuous uptime. Attackers typically exploit this by sending specially crafted files via any interface where file uploads or parsing is permitted, such as web forms, API endpoints, or email attachments, triggering the crash condition without requiring authentication if the endpoint is publicly accessible.
Mitigation strategies must focus on hardening the input validation mechanisms and implementing strict resource controls. Developers should enforce rigorous schema validation to ensure that incoming files conform strictly to expected formats, sizes, and content types before any parsing logic is invoked. Implementing timeouts for file processing operations can prevent infinite loops from consuming resources indefinitely, while setting memory limits ensures that a single malicious request cannot exhaust system RAM. Additionally, deploying Web Application Firewalls with specific rulesets capable of detecting anomalous file structures or high-frequency upload patterns can provide an external layer of defense against exploitation attempts. Regular security testing using fuzzing techniques is also recommended to identify similar edge cases in the parsing logic and ensure that future updates do not reintroduce these weaknesses into the codebase.