cbcvebase.
CVE-2011-5035
published 2011-12-30

CVE-2011-5035: Oracle Glassfish 2.1.1, 3.0.1, and 3.1.1, as used in Communications Server 2.0, Sun Java System Application Server 8.1 and 8.2, and possibly other products…

PriorityP350medium5CVSS 2.0
AVNACLAuNCNINAP
EXPLOIT
EPSS
68.91%
99.3th percentile
Oracle Glassfish 2.1.1, 3.0.1, and 3.1.1, as used in Communications Server 2.0, Sun Java System Application Server 8.1 and 8.2, and possibly other products, computes hash values for form parameters without restricting the ability to trigger hash collisions predictably, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption) by sending many crafted parameters, aka Oracle security ticket S0104869.

Affected

3 ranges
VendorProductVersion rangeFixed in
oracleglassfish_server<= 3.1.1
oracleglassfish_server
oracleglassfish_server

Detection & IOCsextracted from sources · hover to see the quote

commandPOST <path> HTTP/1.1 with Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8 and large body of hash-colliding parameters
  • Detect exploit attempts by monitoring for HTTP POST requests containing an abnormally large number of form parameters (application/x-www-form-urlencoded) sent in a single request, which is the core delivery mechanism for this hash-collision DoS against GlassFish.
  • Alert on HTTP POST requests with Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded where Content-Length approaches or exceeds 2MB (the Java/GlassFish default max), as the PoC tool caps Java payloads at 2MB by default.
  • Flag the specific User-Agent string used by the public PoC exploit tool: 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; de; rv:1.9.2.20) Gecko/20110803 Firefox/3.6.20 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0E)' appearing alongside large POST bodies.
  • The Metasploit module generates a random payload to bypass IDS signatures; pure signature matching on parameter content is insufficient — also monitor for CPU spike correlation with large POST requests to GlassFish endpoints.
  • For Java/GlassFish targets, the collision payload is generated using the DJBX31A hash function (base 31, start 0) over characters in range 0–128; parameters sharing the same hash value will appear as seemingly random but structurally patterned strings.
  • Monitor GlassFish HTTP request parameter parsing for hash table collisions; the attack vector is HTTP POST to any GlassFish endpoint that parses form parameters into a HashMap/HashTable.
  • ·The Metasploit module randomises the collision payload per request to evade static IDS signatures, so content-based signatures alone will not reliably detect all exploit attempts.
  • ·Red Hat JBoss products are NOT affected because they use JBoss Web / Tomcat as the web container, not the GlassFish Web Container; detection rules should be scoped to GlassFish deployments.
  • ·A related but separate variant of this hash-collision issue affects the Java standard library HttpServer class (unlimited HTTP headers stored in HashMap); that variant is tracked under a different bug (Red Hat bug #788606) and is not CVE-2011-5035.
  • ·Affected GlassFish versions are 2.1.1, 3.0.1, and 3.1.1; detection and patching efforts should be prioritised against these specific versions.

CVSS provenance

nvdv2.05.0MEDIUMAV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
vendor_ubuntu6.4MEDIUM
vendor_redhat5.0MEDIUM
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