Gradle's failure to disable repositories failing to answer can expose builds to malicious artifacts

Gradle is a build automation tool, and its native-platform tool provides Java bindings for native APIs. When resolving dependencies in versions before 9.3.0, some exceptions were not treated as fatal errors and would not cause a repository to be disabled. If a build encountered one of these exceptions, Gradle would continue to the next repository in the list and potentially resolve dependencies from a different repository. An exception like NoHttpResponseException can indicate transient errors. If the errors persist after a maximum number of retries, Gradle would continue to the next repository. This behavior could allow an attacker to disrupt the service of a repository and leverage another repository to serve malicious artifacts. This attack requires the attacker to have control over a repository after the disrupted repository. Gradle has introduced a change in behavior in Gradle 9.3.0 to stop searching other repositories when encountering these errors.

The product downloads source code or an executable from a remote location and executes the code without sufficiently verifying the origin and integrity of the code.

An attacker operating through a network path may attempt exploitation when the stated preconditions are met. If successful, the issue may cause the confidentiality, integrity or availability impact described by the vendor.