CVE-2026-1605

In Eclipse Jetty, versions 12.0.0-12.0.31 and 12.1.0-12.0.5, class GzipHandler exposes a vulnerability when a compressed HTTP request, with Content-Encoding: gzip, is processed and the corresponding response is not compressed.

This happens because the JDK Inflater is allocated for decompressing the request, but it is not released because the release mechanism is tied to the compressed response. In this case, since the response is not compressed, the release mechanism does not trigger, causing the leak.

In Eclipse Jetty, versions 12.0.0-12.0.31 and 12.1.0-12.0.5, class GzipHandler exposes a vulnerability when a compressed HTTP request, with Content-Encoding: gzip, is processed and the corresponding response is not compressed.

This happens because the JDK Inflater is allocated for decompressing the request, but it is not released because the release mechanism is tied to the compressed response. In this case, since the response is not compressed, the release mechanism does not trigger, causing the leak.

Description (as reported)

There is a memory leak when using GzipHandler in jetty-12.0.30 that can cause off-heap OOMs. This can be used for DoS attacks so I'm reporting this as a vulnerability.

The leak is created by requests where the request is inflated (Content-Encoding: gzip) and the response is not deflated (no Accept-Encoding: gzip). In these conditions, a new inflator will be created by GzipRequest and never released back into GzipRequest.__inflaterPool because gzipRequest.destory() is not called.

In heap dumps one can see thousands of java.util.zip.Inflator objects, which use both Java heaps and native memory. Leaking native memory causes of off-heap OOMs.

Code path in GzipHandler.handle():

1. Line 601: GzipRequest is created when request inflation is needed.
2. Lines 611-616: The callback is only wrapped in GzipResponseAndCallback when both inflation and deflation are needed.
3. Lines 619-625: If the handler accepts the request (returns true), gzipRequest.destroy() is only called in the "request not accepted" path (returns false)

When deflation is needed, GzipResponseAndCallback (lines 102 and 116) properly calls gzipRequest.destroy() in its succeeded() and failed() methods. But this wrapper is only created when deflation is needed.

Possible fix: The callback should be wrapped whenever a GzipRequest is created, not just when deflation is needed. This ensures gzipRequest.destroy() is always called when the request completes.

Impact

The leak causes the JVM to crash with OOME.

Patches

No patches yet.

Workarounds

Disable GzipHandler.

References

https://github.com/jetty/jetty.project/issues/14260

https://gitlab.eclipse.org/security/cve-assignment/-/issues/79

In Eclipse Jetty, versions 12.0.0-12.0.31 and 12.1.0-12.0.5, class GzipHandler exposes a vulnerability when a compressed HTTP request, with Content-Encoding: gzip, is processed and the corresponding response is not compressed.

This happens because the JDK Inflater is allocated for decompressing the request, but it is not released because the release mechanism is tied to the compressed response. In this case, since the response is not compressed, the release mechanism does not trigger, causing the leak.

In Eclipse Jetty, versions 12.0.0-12.0.31 and 12.1.0-12.0.5, class GzipHandler exposes a vulnerability when a compressed HTTP request, with Content-Encoding: gzip, is processed and the corresponding response is not compressed.

This happens because the JDK Inflater is allocated for decompressing the request, but it is not released because the release mechanism is tied to the compressed response. In this case, since the response is not compressed, the release mechanism does not trigger, causing the leak.

In Eclipse Jetty, versions 12.0.0-12.0.31 and 12.1.0-12.0.5, class GzipHandler exposes a vulnerability when a compressed HTTP request, with Content-Encoding: gzip, is processed and the corresponding response is not compressed. This happens because the JDK Inflater is allocated for decompressing the request, but it is not released because the release mechanism is tied to the compressed response. In this case, since the response is not compressed, the release mechanism does not trigger, causing the leak.