[CASSANDRA-18505] NPE when deserializing malformed collections from client

• Type: Bug
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Normal
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 4.0.10, 4.1.2, 5.0-alpha1, 5.0
• Component/s: Messaging/Client
• Bug Category: Code
• Severity: Low
• Complexity: Low Hanging Fruit
• Discovered By: User Report
• Platform: All
• Since Version: 3.0.0

Source Control Link

https://github.com/apache/cassandra/commit/ae995eb3d3cc1c98f61db0d071522b6f09443927

Test and Documentation Plan

Run through CI

• Assignee: Jon Meredith
• Reporter: Jon Meredith

Authors

Jon Meredith

Reviewers

Caleb Rackliffe

• Created: 08/May/23 16:32
• Updated: 12/Sep/23 13:02
• Resolved: 10/May/23 00:13

Description

When deserializing collections sent from the client, if an element in the collection is incorrectly serialized, Collections.getValue can return null if the length of the element is negative. Currently this isn't detected and serialization continues, calling validate and throwing an NPE in serializers that don't handle null value buffers.

Detect the malformed input and throw a better MarshalException so it will be converted to an InvalidRequestException for the client.