A flaw was found in Docker image running under root user, where it is possible to overwrite the init helper binary of the container runtime or the command executor in Apache Mesos. A malicious user could use this flaw to gain root-level code execution on the host.

When parsing a malformed JSON payload, libprocess in Apache Mesos versions 1.4.0 to 1.5.0 might crash due to an uncaught exception. Parsing chunked HTTP requests with trailers can lead to a libprocess crash too because of the mistakenly planted assertion. A malicious actor can therefore cause a denial of service of Mesos masters rendering the Mesos-controlled cluster inoperable.

When parsing a JSON payload with deeply nested JSON structures, the parser in Apache Mesos versions pre-1.4.x, 1.4.0 to 1.4.2, 1.5.0 to 1.5.1, 1.6.0 to 1.6.1, and 1.7.0 might overflow the stack due to unbounded recursion. A malicious actor can therefore cause a denial of service of Mesos masters rendering the Mesos-controlled cluster inoperable.

Apache Mesos can be configured to require authentication to call the Executor HTTP API using JSON Web Token (JWT). In Apache Mesos versions pre-1.4.2, 1.5.0, 1.5.1, 1.6.0 the comparison of the generated HMAC value against the provided signature in the JWT implementation used is vulnerable to a timing attack because instead of a constant-time string comparison routine a standard == operator has been used. A malicious actor can therefore abuse the timing difference of when the JWT validation function returns to reveal the correct HMAC value.