CVE-2023-3042: CNA SHORTNAME: dotCMSORG UUID: 5b9d93f2-25c7-46b4-ab60-d201718c9dd8

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.1 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2023-10-17 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-79

Description

In dotCMS, versions mentioned, a flaw in the NormalizationFilter does not strip double slashes (//) from URLs, potentially enabling bypasses for XSS and access controls. An example affected URL is https://demo.dotcms.com//html/portlet/ext/files/edit_text_inc.jsp , which should return a 404 response but didn't. The oversight in the default invalid URL character list can be viewed at the provided GitHub link https://github.com/dotCMS/core/blob/master/dotCMS/src/main/java/com/dotcms/filters/NormalizationFilter.java#L37 . To mitigate, users can block URLs with double slashes at firewalls or utilize dotCMS config variables. Specifically, they can use the DOT_URI_NORMALIZATION_FORBIDDEN_STRINGS environmental variable to add // to the list of invalid strings. Additionally, the DOT_URI_NORMALIZATION_FORBIDDEN_REGEX variable offers more detailed control, for instance, to block //html.* URLs. Fix Version:23.06+, LTS 22.03.7+, LTS 23.01.4+

Affected products

dotCMS core: 5.3.8, 21.06, 22.03, 23.01

References

Get alerted when CVE-2023-3042 or the next vulnerability affects your stack