CVE-2024-22871 is a denial of service vulnerability identified in the Clojure programming language, specifically affecting versions 1.20 through 1.12.0-alpha5. The vulnerability resides in the clojure.core$partial$fn__5920 function, which is part of the core library's partial function implementation. An attacker can exploit this flaw remotely without any authentication or user interaction by crafting inputs that trigger excessive resource consumption or application crashes, leading to denial of service. The vulnerability is categorized under CWE-502, which typically involves unsafe deserialization or similar logic errors that can cause unexpected behavior. The CVSS v3.1 base score is 7.5 (high), reflecting the network attack vector, low attack complexity, no privileges required, no user interaction, and a high impact on availability, with no impact on confidentiality or integrity. No patches or fixes have been published at the time of disclosure, and no known exploits have been observed in the wild. This vulnerability poses a risk to any systems running the affected Clojure versions, particularly those exposed to untrusted inputs or network traffic. Organizations relying on Clojure for backend services, APIs, or microservices should prioritize monitoring and mitigation efforts to prevent potential service outages.

The primary impact of CVE-2024-22871 is on the availability of systems running vulnerable Clojure versions. Successful exploitation can cause applications to crash or become unresponsive, resulting in denial of service conditions. For European organizations, this can disrupt critical business operations, especially for those relying on Clojure-based services in production environments such as financial services, telecommunications, and cloud platforms. The lack of authentication or user interaction requirements increases the risk of automated attacks from remote adversaries. Additionally, organizations providing software development platforms or cloud services that support Clojure may face reputational damage and operational downtime. The vulnerability does not affect confidentiality or integrity, but the service disruption alone can have significant financial and operational consequences. Given the widespread use of Clojure in certain sectors and the high severity rating, European entities should treat this vulnerability as a priority for risk management and incident response planning.

1. Monitor official Clojure repositories and security advisories for patches or updates addressing CVE-2024-22871 and apply them promptly once available. 2. Implement network-level access controls such as firewalls and intrusion prevention systems to restrict exposure of Clojure-based services to untrusted networks. 3. Employ application-layer rate limiting and input validation to reduce the risk of triggering the vulnerable function with malicious payloads. 4. Conduct code reviews and testing to identify usage of the clojure.core$partial$fn__5920 function and assess the potential for exploitation within your applications. 5. Consider deploying runtime application self-protection (RASP) or behavior monitoring tools to detect abnormal application behavior indicative of DoS attempts. 6. Prepare incident response plans to quickly isolate and remediate affected systems in case of exploitation. 7. Where feasible, isolate vulnerable services in segmented network zones to limit the blast radius of potential attacks. 8. Educate development and operations teams about the vulnerability and encourage secure coding practices to prevent similar issues.