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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.3

CVE-2021-28164 json

Authorization Before Parsing and Canonicalization in jetty

published 2021-04-01 5 y ago modified 2026-07-08 4 mo ago also GHSA-v7ff-8wcx-gmc5 , EUVD-2021-0877

cvss
5.3
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
82.4%
EPSS 82.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 99.6%
public exploits
2
Metasploit, Exploit-DB, plus a Nuclei check

Summary

In Eclipse Jetty 9.4.37.v20210219 to 9.4.38.v20210224, the default compliance mode allows requests with URIs that contain %2e or %2e%2e segments to access protected resources within the WEB-INF directory. For example a request to /context/%2e/WEB-INF/web.xml can retrieve the web.xml file. This can reveal sensitive information regarding the implementation of a web application.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-webapp 9.4.39
  • jetty9 Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 9.4.39-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-28164

  • rh-eclipse-jetty devtools 2021 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9
  • rh-eclipse-jetty-io devtools 2021 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9
  • rh-eclipse-jetty-jmx devtools 2021 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9
  • rh-eclipse-jetty-xml devtools 2021 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9
  • rh-eclipse-jetty-http devtools 2021 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9
  • rh-eclipse-jetty-jaas devtools 2021 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9
  • rh-eclipse-jetty-util devtools 2021 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9
  • rh-eclipse-jetty-client devtools 2021 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9

red hat advisories RHSA-2021:1509

  • jetty-minimal SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP3, SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP2 9.4.42-3.9.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2021:2005-1

  • jetty-minimal openSUSE Leap 15.3 9.4.42-3.9.1
  • jetty-websocket openSUSE Leap 15.3 9.4.42-3.9.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2021:2005-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2021-28164 updated cvss 5.3

jetty: Ambiguous paths can access WEB-INF

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 jetty-io, jetty-ant, jetty-jmx, jetty-jsp, jetty-xml, jetty-http, +30 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 jetty-io, jetty-http, jetty-util, jetty-server, jetty-servlet, jetty-security, +1 more
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Integration Camel Quarkus 1 jetty Red Hat Integration Service Registry jetty-server
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat JBoss A-MQ 6 jetty-server Red Hat JBoss Fuse 6 jetty, jetty-server
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13 (Queens) opendaylight
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat AMQ 7.8.2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2021:2689
  • Red Hat AMQ 7.9.0
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2021:3700
  • Red Hat AMQ Streams 1.6.4
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2021:1560
show 6 more
  • Red Hat AMQ Streams 1.8.0
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2021:3225
  • Red Hat Developer Tools for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 7) rh-eclipse-jetty 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9, rh-eclipse-jetty-io 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9, rh-eclipse-jetty-jmx 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9, rh-eclipse-jetty-xml 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9, rh-eclipse-jetty-http 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9, rh-eclipse-jetty-jaas 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9, +9 more Red Hat Developer Tools for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 7) rh-eclipse-jetty 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9, rh-eclipse-jetty-io 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9, rh-eclipse-jetty-jmx 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9, rh-eclipse-jetty-xml 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9, rh-eclipse-jetty-http 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9, rh-eclipse-jetty-jaas 9.4.40-1.1.el7_9, +9 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2021:1509
  • Red Hat Fuse 7.10
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2021:5134
  • Red Hat Integration Camel Quarkus 2
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2021:4767
  • Red Hat RHAF Camel-K 1.8
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2022:6407
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.11 jenkins Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 jenkins, openshift4/ose-metering-hive, openshift4/ose-metering-hadoop, openshift4/ose-metering-presto
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. First public exploit (Metasploit auxiliary/gather/jetty_web_inf_disclosure)

Exploit prediction

82.37% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 99.6% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
NVD 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N
GitHub 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-webapp
>=9.4.37, <9.4.39
9.4.39

Affected products

  • The Eclipse Foundation Eclipse Jetty

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-200 Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor
  • CWE-551 Incorrect Behavior Order: Authorization Before Parsing and Canonicalization
  • CWE-863 Incorrect Authorization

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.