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GHSA-qw69-rqj8-6qw8

MediumCVSS 5.3 / 10
Published Apr 19, 2023·Last modified Feb 4, 2026
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

Impact

Servlets with multipart support (e.g. annotated with @MultipartConfig) that call HttpServletRequest.getParameter() or HttpServletRequest.getParts() may cause OutOfMemoryError when the client sends a multipart request with a part that has a name but no filename and a very large content.

This happens even with the default settings of fileSizeThreshold=0 which should stream the whole part content to disk.

An attacker client may send a large multipart request and cause the server to throw OutOfMemoryError. However, the server may be able to recover after the OutOfMemoryError and continue its service -- although it may take some time.

A very large number of parts may cause the same problem.

Patches

Patched in Jetty versions

  • 9.4.51.v20230217 - via PR #9345
  • 10.0.14 - via PR #9344
  • 11.0.14 - via PR #9344

Workarounds

Multipart parameter maxRequestSize must be set to a non-negative value, so the whole multipart content is limited (although still read into memory). Limiting multipart parameter maxFileSize won't be enough because an attacker can send a large number of parts that summed up will cause memory issues.

References

  • https://github.com/eclipse/jetty.project/issues/9076
  • https://github.com/jakartaee/servlet/blob/6.0.0/spec/src/main/asciidoc/servlet-spec-body.adoc#32-file-upload
Risk Scores
Base Score
5.3

The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a low impact on the availability of the system.

Threat Intelligence
4.9

Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.

EPSS
3.26%

The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.

Exploit
Not available

We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.

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