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GHSA-hmr7-m48g-48f6

GitHub Security Advisory

Jetty accepts "+" prefixed value in Content-Length

✓ GitHub Reviewed MODERATE Has CVE

Advisory Details

### Impact

Jetty accepts the '+' character proceeding the content-length value in a HTTP/1 header field. This is more permissive than allowed by the RFC and other servers routinely reject such requests with 400 responses. There is no known exploit scenario, but it is conceivable that request smuggling could result if jetty is used in combination with a server that does not close the connection after sending such a 400 response.

### Workarounds

There is no workaround as there is no known exploit scenario.

### Original Report

[RFC 9110 Secion 8.6](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110#section-8.6) defined the value of Content-Length header should be a string of 0-9 digits. However we found that Jetty accepts "+" prefixed Content-Length, which could lead to potential HTTP request smuggling.

Payload:

```
POST / HTTP/1.1
Host: a.com
Content-Length: +16
Connection: close

0123456789abcdef
```

When sending this payload to Jetty, it can successfully parse and identify the length.

When sending this payload to NGINX, Apache HTTPd or other HTTP servers/parsers, they will return 400 bad request.

This behavior can lead to HTTP request smuggling and can be leveraged to bypass WAF or IDS.

Affected Packages

Maven org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-http
Affected versions: 9.0.0 (fixed in 9.4.52)
Maven org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-http
Affected versions: 10.0.0 (fixed in 10.0.16)
Maven org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-http
Affected versions: 11.0.0 (fixed in 11.0.16)
Maven org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-http
Affected versions: 12.0.0 (fixed in 12.0.1)

Related CVEs

Key Information

GHSA ID
GHSA-hmr7-m48g-48f6
Published
September 14, 2023 4:17 PM
Last Modified
October 2, 2023 9:03 PM
CVSS Score
5.0 /10
Primary Ecosystem
Maven
Primary Package
org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-http
GitHub Reviewed
✓ Yes

Dataset

Last updated: July 12, 2025 6:29 AM

Data from GitHub Advisory Database. This information is provided for research and educational purposes.