Vulnerability · Published Aug 5, 2022 · Assigned by redhat
CVE-2022-2053
High 7.5
In plain English
A high-severity uncontrolled resource consumption in Undertow. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 1.1% (higher than 66% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
When a POST request comes through AJP and the request exceeds the max-post-size limit (maxEntitySize), Undertow's AjpServerRequestConduit implementation closes a connection without sending any response to the client/proxy. This behavior results in that a front-end proxy marking the backend worker (application server) as an error state and not forward requests to the worker for a while. In mod_cluster, this continues until the next STATUS request (10 seconds intervals) from the application server updates the server state. So, in the worst case, it can result in "All workers are in error state" and mod_cluster responds "503 Service Unavailable" for a while (up to 10 seconds). In mod_proxy_balancer, it does not forward requests to the worker until the "retry" timeout passes. However, luckily, mod_proxy_balancer has "forcerecovery" setting (On by default; this parameter can force the immediate recovery of all workers without considering the retry parameter of the workers if all workers of a balancer are in error state.). So, unlike mod_cluster, mod_proxy_balancer does not result in responding "503 Service Unavailable". An attacker could use this behavior to send a malicious request and trigger server errors, resulting in DoS (denial of service). This flaw was fixed in Undertow 2.2.19.Final, Undertow 2.3.0.Alpha2.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian:14 | undertow | 2.2.18-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2022-2053 |
| Maven | io.undertow:undertow-core | 2.2.19.Final | GHSA-95rf-557x-44g5 |
| Maven | io.undertow:undertow-core | 2.3.0.Alpha2 | GHSA-95rf-557x-44g5 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | undertow | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2022-2053 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | undertow | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2022-2053 |
| Ubuntu:26.10 | undertow | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2022-2053 |
Affected products (as reported)
Weakness: CWE-400
References
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2095862&comment#0 x_refsource_MISC
- https://issues.redhat.com/browse/UNDERTOW-2133 x_refsource_MISC