CVE-2023-42503

MEDIUMNVD 5.55.5—
EchelonGraph scoreMEDIUM confidence

This medium-severity CVE scores 5.5 under NVD CVSS v3. EPSS exploit probability: 0.5%, top 61% of all CVEs by exploit prediction. GitHub Security Advisory data not yet ingested — confidence will rise once GHSA publishes (typical lag: hours to days for open-source ecosystem CVEs; never for infrastructure-only CVEs).

Triggered by: NVD CVSS baseline
Sources: epss, nvd
5.5
EchelonGraph verdictMonitorLow exploitation likelihood right now — keep watching.
  • Lower severity and no public exploit yet
CISA-KEV: Not listedEPSS: 0%CVSS: 5.5Exploit: NoneExposed: 0

No vendor fix yet — apply a workaround or compensating control (WAF / firewall / segmentation) and watch for a patch.

Improper Input Validation, Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in Apache Commons Compress in TAR parsing.This issue affects Apache Commons Compress: from 1.22 before 1.24.0.

Users are recommended to upgrade to version 1.24.0, which fixes the issue.

A third party can create a malformed TAR file by manipulating file modification times headers, which when parsed with Apache Commons Compress, will cause a denial of service issue via CPU consumption.

In version 1.22 of Apache Commons Compress, support was added for file modification times with higher precision (issue # COMPRESS-612 [1]). The format for the PAX extended headers carrying this data consists of two numbers separated by a period [2], indicating seconds and subsecond precision (for example “1647221103.5998539”). The impacted fields are “atime”, “ctime”, “mtime” and “LIBARCHIVE.creationtime”. No input validation is performed prior to the parsing of header values.

Parsing of these numbers uses the BigDecimal [3] class from the JDK which has a publicly known algorithmic complexity issue when doing operations on large numbers, causing denial of service (see issue # JDK-6560193 [4]). A third party can manipulate file time headers in a TAR file by placing a number with a very long fraction (300,000 digits) or a number with exponent notation (such as “9e9999999”) within a file modification time header, and the parsing of files with these headers will take hours instead of seconds, leading to a denial of service via exhaustion of CPU resources. This issue is similar to CVE-2012-2098 [5].

[1]: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COMPRESS-612 [2]: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/pax.html#tag_20_92_13_05 [3]: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/math/BigDecimal.html [4]: https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-6560193 [5]: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2012-2098

Only applications using CompressorStreamFactory class (with auto-detection of file types), TarArchiveInputStream and TarFile classes to parse TAR files are impacted. Since this code was introduced in v1.22, only that version and later versions are impacted.

CVSS v3
5.5
EG Score
5.5(medium)
EG Risk
29(Track)
EG Risk 29/100SSVC: Track

EG Risk is EchelonGraph's 0–100 priority score: it fuses intrinsic severity with real-world exploitation and automatability so you can rank equal-severity CVEs and fix the most dangerous first. Higher = act sooner. Distinct from the 0–10 EG Score (severity).

How it’s computed
Severity55% × 45%
Exploitation0% × 40%
Automatability30% × 15%
Action: Routine — remediate on your standard cadence.
EPSS
39.2%
KEV
Not listed

Published

September 14, 2023

Last Modified

June 17, 2026

References (4)

Affected Packages

(1 across 1 ecosystem)
Maven(1)
PackageVulnerable rangeFixed inDependents
org.apache.commons:commons-compress1.22, 1.23.01.24.0—

Weakness Classification(2)

MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration — the root-cause categories this CVE belongs to.

Data Freshness Timeline

(refreshed 12× in last 7d / 49× in last 30d)

Each row is a source pipeline that fetched or updated this CVE on that date, with what changed. For example, "NVD update" means NVD published or revised its analysis for this CVE; "MITRE cvelistV5" means we ingested or refreshed it from the CNA feed. Most recent first.

Showing the most recent 100 of 108 total refreshes for this CVE.

  1. 2026-07-23 02:26 UTCEG score recompute
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Related CVEs(same CWE)

Frequently asked(5)

What is CVE-2023-42503?
CVE-2023-42503 is a medium vulnerability published on September 14, 2023. Improper Input Validation, Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in Apache Commons Compress in TAR parsing.This issue affects Apache Commons Compress: from 1.22 before 1.24.0. Users are recommended to upgrade to version 1.24.0, which fixes the issue. A third party can create a malformed…
When was CVE-2023-42503 disclosed?
CVE-2023-42503 was first published in the National Vulnerability Database on September 14, 2023, with the most recent update on June 17, 2026. EchelonGraph re-ingests CVE updates from NVD on a 2-hour cycle, so this page reflects the latest published state.
Is CVE-2023-42503 actively exploited?
CVE-2023-42503 is not currently on CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. FIRST EPSS estimates a 39.2% percentile likelihood of exploitation in the next 30 days — higher percentiles indicate greater predicted risk.
What is the CVSS score of CVE-2023-42503?
CVE-2023-42503 has a CVSS v3 base score of 5.5 (NVD).
How do I remediate CVE-2023-42503?
Patch to the fixed version published by the affected vendor. Where vendor advisories exist for CVE-2023-42503, EchelonGraph cross-links them in the Vendor Advisories panel below — those typically contain the canonical remediation steps, fixed version numbers, and any vendor-specific mitigations.

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