CVE-2018-12536

In Eclipse Jetty Server, all 9.x versions, on webapps deployed using default Error Handling, when an intentionally bad query arrives that doesn't match a dynamic url-pattern, and is eventually handled by the DefaultServlet's static file serving, the bad characters can trigger a java.nio.file.InvalidPathException which includes the full path to the base resource directory that the DefaultServlet and/or webapp is using. If this InvalidPathException is then handled by the default Error Handler, the InvalidPathException message is included in the error response, revealing the full server path to the requesting system.

In Eclipse Jetty Server, all 9.x versions, on webapps deployed using default Error Handling, when an intentionally bad query arrives that doesn't match a dynamic url-pattern, and is eventually handled by the DefaultServlet's static file serving, the bad characters can trigger a java.nio.file.InvalidPathException which includes the full path to the base resource directory that the DefaultServlet and/or webapp is using. If this InvalidPathException is then handled by the default Error Handler, the InvalidPathException message is included in the error response, revealing the full server path to the requesting system.

In Eclipse Jetty Server, all 9.x versions, on webapps deployed using default Error Handling, when an intentionally bad query arrives that doesn't match a dynamic url-pattern, and is eventually handled by the DefaultServlet's static file serving, the bad characters can trigger a java.nio.file.InvalidPathException which includes the full path to the base resource directory that the DefaultServlet and/or webapp is using. If this InvalidPathException is then handled by the default Error Handler, the InvalidPathException message is included in the error response, revealing the full server path to the requesting system.

From the reporter

XmlParser is vulnerable to XML external entity (XXE) vulnerability. XmlParser is being used when parsing Jetty’s xml configuration files. An attacker might exploit this vulnerability in order to achieve SSRF or cause a denial of service. One possible scenario is importing a (remote) malicious WAR into a Jetty’s server, while the WAR includes a malicious web.xml.

Impact

There are no circumstances in a normally deployed Jetty server where potentially hostile XML is given to the XmlParser class without the attacker already having arbitrary access to the server. I.e. in order to exploit XmlParser the attacker would already have the ability to deploy and execute hostile code. Specifically, Jetty has no protection against malicious web application and potentially hostile web applications should only be run on an isolated virtualisation.

Thus this is not considered a vulnerability of the Jetty server itself, as any such usage of the jetty XmlParser is equally vulnerable as a direct usage of the JVM supplied SAX parser. No CVE will be allocated to this advisory.

However, any direct usage of the XmlParser class by an application may be vulnerable. The impact would greatly depend on how the application uses XmlParser, but it could be a denial of service due to large entity expansion, or possibly the revealing local files if the XML results are accessible remotely.

Patches

Ability to configure the SAXParserFactory to fit the needs of your particular XML parser implementation have been merged as part of PR #10067

Workarounds

Don't use Jetty's XmlParser to parse data from users.

In Eclipse Jetty Server, all 9.x versions, on webapps deployed using default Error Handling, when an intentionally bad query arrives that doesn't match a dynamic url-pattern, and is eventually handled by the DefaultServlet's static file serving, the bad characters can trigger a java.nio.file.InvalidPathException which includes the full path to the base resource directory that the DefaultServlet and/or webapp is using. If this InvalidPathException is then handled by the default Error Handler, the InvalidPathException message is included in the error response, revealing the full server path to the requesting system.

In Eclipse Jetty Server, all 9.x versions, on webapps deployed using default Error Handling, when an intentionally bad query arrives that doesn't match a dynamic url-pattern, and is eventually handled by the DefaultServlet's static file serving, the bad characters can trigger a java.nio.file.InvalidPathException which includes the full path to the base resource directory that the DefaultServlet and/or webapp is using. If this InvalidPathException is then handled by the default Error Handler, the InvalidPathException message is included in the error response, revealing the full server path to the requesting system.