CVE-2024-54677 is an uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability categorized under CWE-400, found in the examples web application bundled with Apache Tomcat. This vulnerability allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to trigger excessive resource usage, such as CPU or memory exhaustion, leading to denial of service conditions. The affected versions span multiple major releases: from 8.5.0 through 8.5.100 (EOL), 9.0.0.M1 through 9.9.97, 10.1.0-M1 through 10.1.33, and 11.0.0-M1 through 11.0.1. The flaw resides specifically in the example web application, which is often deployed by default or used for testing and demonstration purposes. Exploitation requires no authentication or user interaction and can be performed remotely over the network. The vulnerability does not impact confidentiality or integrity but can cause significant availability degradation by exhausting server resources, potentially crashing the Tomcat service or making it unresponsive. The Apache Software Foundation has addressed this issue in versions 11.0.2, 10.1.34, and 9.0.98, and users are strongly recommended to upgrade. Although no known exploits are currently reported in the wild, the vulnerability's characteristics make it a credible threat, especially in environments where the example application is accessible. Organizations using older or EOL versions should consider upgrading or removing the example application to mitigate risk.

For European organizations, the primary impact of CVE-2024-54677 is the risk of denial of service on systems running vulnerable Apache Tomcat versions. This can lead to service outages affecting web applications, internal tools, or customer-facing portals, potentially disrupting business operations and causing reputational damage. Critical sectors such as finance, healthcare, government, and telecommunications that rely heavily on Java-based web infrastructure may experience operational interruptions. The vulnerability's ease of exploitation without authentication increases the risk of opportunistic attacks, especially if the example application is publicly accessible. While no direct data breach risk exists, the availability impact can indirectly affect confidentiality and integrity by preventing timely updates or incident response. Organizations with compliance obligations under GDPR must consider the operational risks and potential service-level agreement breaches arising from DoS incidents. The presence of EOL versions in some environments may exacerbate the risk due to lack of vendor support and delayed patching.

1. Immediately upgrade Apache Tomcat to the fixed versions: 11.0.2, 10.1.34, or 9.0.98, depending on your deployment. 2. If upgrading is not immediately feasible, disable or remove the examples web application from the Tomcat server to eliminate the vulnerable component. 3. Restrict network access to the examples application by applying firewall rules or network segmentation to limit exposure to trusted internal users only. 4. Monitor server resource utilization and set alerts for unusual spikes in CPU, memory, or thread usage that could indicate exploitation attempts. 5. Implement rate limiting or web application firewall (WAF) rules to detect and block abnormal request patterns targeting the examples application. 6. Conduct regular vulnerability scans and penetration tests focusing on web application components to identify residual risks. 7. Maintain an inventory of Tomcat versions deployed across the organization and enforce patch management policies to prevent running EOL or vulnerable versions. 8. Educate development and operations teams about the risks of deploying example or demo applications in production environments.