Impact
The vulnerability exists in IBM MQ when it processes multicast status messages. An attacker who can authenticate to the MQ system can send a specially crafted message that is deserialized by IBM MQ, causing a NULL pointer dereference and triggering a crash. This loss of service prevents clients from communicating with the queue manager and does not provide code execution or data exfiltration capabilities. The weakness is a classic deserialization flaw as identified by CWE-502.
Affected Systems
IBM MQ Advanced container images and IBM MQ Operator are affected. Versions prior to the releases listed in the IBM security bulletin – for example, container images 10.0.0.5‑r2 and 10.0.1‑0‑r1, and operator releases 4.0.5, 3.2.30 – contain the flaw.
Risk and Exploitability
The CVSS score of 6.5 indicates a moderate severity that mainly threatens availability. Exploitability is contingent on the attacker having authenticated access to the IBM MQ environment; no publicly known remote exploitation has been reported, and the EPSS score is not available. The vulnerability is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog. While the potential impact is disruptive to availability, the overall risk remains moderate pending the application of vendor-published patches.
OpenCVE Enrichment