All vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-28165

Jetty vulnerable to incorrect handling of invalid large TLS frame, exhausting CPU resources

Description

Impact

When using SSL/TLS with Jetty, either with HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, or WebSocket, the server may receive an invalid large (greater than 17408) TLS frame that is incorrectly handled, causing CPU resources to eventually reach 100% usage.

Workarounds

The problem can be worked around by compiling the following class:

package org.eclipse.jetty.server.ssl.fix6072;

import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
import javax.net.ssl.SSLEngine;
import javax.net.ssl.SSLEngineResult;
import javax.net.ssl.SSLException;
import javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException;

import org.eclipse.jetty.io.EndPoint;
import org.eclipse.jetty.io.ssl.SslConnection;
import org.eclipse.jetty.server.Connector;
import org.eclipse.jetty.server.SslConnectionFactory;
import org.eclipse.jetty.util.BufferUtil;
import org.eclipse.jetty.util.annotation.Name;
import org.eclipse.jetty.util.ssl.SslContextFactory;

public class SpaceCheckingSslConnectionFactory extends SslConnectionFactory
{
    public SpaceCheckingSslConnectionFactory(@Name("sslContextFactory") SslContextFactory factory, @Name("next") String nextProtocol)
    {
        super(factory, nextProtocol);
    }

    @Override
    protected SslConnection newSslConnection(Connector connector, EndPoint endPoint, SSLEngine engine)
    {
        return new SslConnection(connector.getByteBufferPool(), connector.getExecutor(), endPoint, engine, isDirectBuffersForEncryption(), isDirectBuffersForDecryption())
        {
            @Override
            protected SSLEngineResult unwrap(SSLEngine sslEngine, ByteBuffer input, ByteBuffer output) throws SSLException
            {
                SSLEngineResult results = super.unwrap(sslEngine, input, output);

                if ((results.getStatus() == SSLEngineResult.Status.BUFFER_UNDERFLOW ||
                    results.getStatus() == SSLEngineResult.Status.OK && results.bytesConsumed() == 0 && results.bytesProduced() == 0) &&
                    BufferUtil.space(input) == 0)
                {
                    BufferUtil.clear(input);
                    throw new SSLHandshakeException("Encrypted buffer max length exceeded");
                }
                return results;
            }
        };
    }
}

This class can be deployed by:

  • The resulting class file should be put into a jar file (eg sslfix6072.jar)
  • The jar file should be made available to the server. For a normal distribution this can be done by putting the file into ${jetty.base}/lib
  • Copy the file ${jetty.home}/modules/ssl.mod to ${jetty.base}/modules
  • Edit the ${jetty.base}/modules/ssl.mod file to have the following section:
[lib]
lib/sslfix6072.jar
  • Copy the file ${jetty.home}/etc/jetty-https.xml and${jetty.home}/etc/jetty-http2.xml to ${jetty.base}/etc
  • Edit files ${jetty.base}/etc/jetty-https.xml and ${jetty.base}/etc/jetty-http2.xml, changing any reference of org.eclipse.jetty.server.SslConnectionFactory to org.eclipse.jetty.server.ssl.fix6072.SpaceCheckingSslConnectionFactory. For example:
  <Call name="addIfAbsentConnectionFactory">
    <Arg>
      <New class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.ssl.fix6072.SpaceCheckingSslConnectionFactory">
        <Arg name="next">http/1.1</Arg>
        <Arg name="sslContextFactory"><Ref refid="sslContextFactory"/></Arg>
      </New>
    </Arg>
  </Call>
  • Restart Jetty

Patch Available

Fix available through Seal Security. 

No upgrade required, protect your application instantly.

Fix without upgrading
Score
7.5
Severity
High
Ecosystem
Java
Publish Date
April 6, 2021
Modified Date
March 13, 2026
Score Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Affected Versions