What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-36478: HTTP/2 HPACK integer overflow and buffer allocation

Description

Eclipse Jetty provides a web server and servlet container. In versions 11.0.0 through 11.0.15, 10.0.0 through 10.0.15, and 9.0.0 through 9.4.52, an integer overflow in `MetaDataBuilder.checkSize` allows for HTTP/2 HPACK header values to exceed their size limit. `MetaDataBuilder.java` determines if a header name or value exceeds the size limit, and throws an exception if the limit is exceeded. However, when length is very large and huffman is true, the multiplication by 4 in line 295 will overflow, and length will become negative. `(_size+length)` will now be negative, and the check on line 296 will not be triggered. Furthermore, `MetaDataBuilder.checkSize` allows for user-entered HPACK header value sizes to be negative, potentially leading to a very large buffer allocation later on when the user-entered size is multiplied by 2. This means that if a user provides a negative length value (or, more precisely, a length value which, when multiplied by the 4/3 fudge factor, is negative), and this length value is a very large positive number when multiplied by 2, then the user can cause a very large buffer to be allocated on the server. Users of HTTP/2 can be impacted by a remote denial of service attack. The issue has been fixed in versions 11.0.16, 10.0.16, and 9.4.53. There are no known workarounds.

Affected products

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: The Eclipse Foundation Eclipse Jetty 10.0.16, 11.0.16, 9.4.53; Jenkins 2.414.3, 2.428. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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