CVE-2023-5236VulnerabilityPublished 18 Dec 2023Updated 21 Nov 2025

CVE-2023-5236: Red Hat Data Grid 8.4.4 · Vulnerability

Affects Red Hat Data Grid 8.4.4Source CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 4.4 Medium.

Data as of 25 Oct 2026, 19:02 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

4.4Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 1.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 65% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: High
Privileges Required: High
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: High: A successful attack depends on conditions beyond the attacker's control. That is, a successful attack cannot be accomplished at will, but requires the attacker to invest in some measurable amount of effort in preparation or execution against the vulnerable component before a successful attack can be expected. For example, a successful attack may require an attacker to: gather knowledge about the environment in which the vulnerable target/component exists; prepare the target environment to improve exploit reliability; or inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim in order to read and/or modify network communications (e.g., a man in the middle attack).
Privileges Required: High: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide significant (e.g., administrative) control over the vulnerable component that could affect component-wide settings and files.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 18 Dec 2023
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 2026-10-25.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2023-5236, European organizations should implement the following specific measures: 1) Restrict and tightly control access to Red Hat Data Grid management interfaces and APIs to only trusted and authenticated users with the minimum necessary privileges. 2) Monitor cache usage and memory consumption metrics closely to detect unusual spikes that could indicate exploitation attempts. 3) Employ runtime application self-protection (RASP) or Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) that can detect and block suspicious payloads targeting the cache layer. 4) Isolate Red Hat Data Grid instances within secure network segments to reduce exposure. 5) Regularly audit and rotate credentials used to access the data grid to minimize risk from compromised accounts. 6) Stay updated with Red Hat security advisories and apply patches or updates as soon as they become available. 7) Consider implementing application-level input validation to prevent insertion of malformed or malicious objects into the cache. 8) Conduct penetration testing and vulnerability assessments focused on the caching infrastructure to identify potential exploitation paths. These steps go beyond generic advice by focusing on access control, monitoring, and proactive detection tailored to the nature of this vulnerability.

Description

A flaw was found in Infinispan, which does not detect circular object references when unmarshalling. An authenticated attacker with sufficient permissions could insert a maliciously constructed object into the cache and use it to cause out of memory errors and achieve a denial of service.

Impact

For European organizations, the primary impact of CVE-2023-5236 is on the availability of critical applications and services that depend on Red Hat Data Grid 8.4.4. A successful exploitation can cause denial of service by exhausting memory resources, potentially leading to application crashes or degraded performance. This can disrupt business operations, especially in sectors like finance, telecommunications, and public services where high availability and data grid performance are critical. Since the vulnerability requires authenticated access with high privileges, the risk is somewhat mitigated by internal access controls; however, insider threats or compromised credentials could still lead to exploitation. The lack of impact on confidentiality and integrity reduces risks related to data breaches, but service outages can have cascading effects on dependent systems and user experience. Organizations with large-scale deployments or those using Red Hat Data Grid in clustered or cloud environments may face amplified impact due to the distributed nature of the service. Additionally, denial of service incidents could attract regulatory scrutiny under European data protection and operational resilience frameworks.

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 21 Nov 2025, 12:29 UTC

Technical details

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