Description

IBM Cloud Pak for Data System 11.3.0.2 through Interim Fix 001 is vulnerable to a denial of service due to improper limitation of resources.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "6.2",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-28T22:16:49.180Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-28T22:16:49.180Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability exists within the IBM Cloud Pak for Data System, specifically affecting versions 11.3.0.2 through Interim Fix 001. The vulnerability stems from an improper limitation of resources, which allows an unauthorized or authenticated attacker to exhaust system availability by intentionally triggering resource depletion.\nThe risk implication is significant as successful exploitation results in the degradation or total cessation of critical data services, rendering the platform unresponsive to legitimate user requests. The vulnerability resides in the resource management subsystem of the affected product. Attackers do not necessarily require high-level administrative privileges to initiate the attack, provided they can interact with the vulnerable resource-consuming interfaces. The primary impact is service disruption and loss of availability, which may affect business continuity for organizations relying on the IBM Cloud Pak for Data System for data management and analytics workflows. There is no evidence of remote code execution or data exfiltration associated with this specific resource exhaustion flaw.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability is the failure of the IBM Cloud Pak for Data System to implement adequate rate limiting, quotas, or strict resource thresholds on specific system processes or API endpoints. By design, the product manages multiple concurrent data tasks and system services; however, the lack of granular resource containment allows an attacker to submit requests or perform operations that consume disproportionate amounts of CPU, memory, or I/O bandwidth.\nThe attack flow typically involves the identification of an endpoint or system service that triggers back-end processing without sufficient validation or resource capping. An attacker sends a series of specifically crafted requests designed to maximize resource consumption on the target system. Because the system fails to apply defensive limits, the targeted resource—such as a thread pool, memory allocation buffer, or socket connection limit—becomes saturated. Once these limits are reached, the system cannot process further requests, leading to a state where the application hangs, crashes, or fails to respond to standard operational inputs.\nAffected versions include IBM Cloud Pak for Data System 11.3.0.2 through Interim Fix 001. The vulnerability resides within the internal resource management components responsible for handling client-server communication or background data processing tasks. The exploitation mechanism is primarily logic-based: by repeatedly invoking expensive operations that lack appropriate resource usage bounds, the attacker forces the system into a state of instability.\nExploitation does not necessarily require highly sophisticated payloads, but rather a sustained stream of requests that exceed the nominal operating capacity of the vulnerable component. Post-exploitation impact is limited to denial of service, though this can trigger secondary failures in integrated services that depend on the stability of the Cloud Pak environment. The system's inability to throttle or isolate these resource-heavy operations facilitates the persistence of the DoS condition until the service is manually restarted or the underlying resource conflict is resolved by administrative intervention."
}