CVE-2026-10050VulnerabilityPublished 22 Jul 2026

org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-security · Eclipse Jetty Digest Authentication: ISO-8859-1 lossy encoding allows authentication bypass via character substitution

Affects org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-securitySource GCVE Database

Authoritative record:CVE-2026-10050· High 8.7

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 8.7 High : upgrade to 9.4.63 soon.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 10:12 UTC

CVSS 4.0 base score

8.7High

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 50% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 9.4.63, 10.0.31, 11.0.31 +2

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Attack Requirements: None
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Vulnerable system confidentiality: High
Vulnerable system integrity: None
Vulnerable system availability: None
Subsequent system confidentiality: None
Subsequent system integrity: None
Subsequent system availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable system is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed below, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed “remotely exploitable” and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: The attacker must take no measurable action to exploit the vulnerability. The attack requires no target-specific circumvention to exploit the vulnerability. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable system.
Attack Requirements: None: The successful attack does not depend on the deployment and execution conditions of the vulnerable system. The attacker can expect to be able to reach the vulnerability and execute the exploit under all or most instances of the vulnerability.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files of the vulnerable system to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without interaction from any human user, other than the attacker.
Vulnerable system confidentiality: High: There is a total loss of confidentiality, resulting in all information within the Vulnerable System being divulged to the attacker. Alternatively, access to only some restricted information is obtained, but the disclosed information presents a direct, serious impact. For example, an attacker steals the administrator's password, or private encryption keys of a web server.
Vulnerable system integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the Subsequent System or all confidentiality impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the Subsequent System or all integrity impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the Subsequent System or all availability impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v4.0 specification.

Exploitation evidence

t = 0 is the CVE’s publication on cve.org

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 4 Aug 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: evidence found.
CISA SSVC: proof of concept public
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

CVE ID reserved
by Eclipse Foundation
29 May 202607:26 UTC, 67 days before disclosure
CVE published
on cve.org
4 Aug 202611:02 UTC, t = 0
CISA SSVC assessment
proof of concept public
4 Aug 202612:45 UTC, 2 hours after disclosure

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), CISA SSVC, the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade to a fixed release listed under Affected software.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Mavenorg.eclipse.jetty:jetty-security	Affected >=9.4.0.v20161208 <9.4.63	Fixed in 9.4.63
Mavenorg.eclipse.jetty:jetty-security	Affected >=10.0.0 <10.0.31	Fixed in 10.0.31
Mavenorg.eclipse.jetty:jetty-security	Affected >=11.0.0 <11.0.31	Fixed in 11.0.31
Mavenorg.eclipse.jetty:jetty-security	Affected >=12.0.0 <12.0.36	Fixed in 12.0.36
Mavenorg.eclipse.jetty.ee8:jetty-ee8-security	Affected >=12.0.0 <12.0.36	Fixed in 12.0.36
Mavenorg.eclipse.jetty.ee9:jetty-ee9-security	Affected >=12.0.0 <12.0.36	Fixed in 12.0.36

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

Description

### Summary The `DigestAuthentication.apply()` method in Jetty's HTTP client uses `getBytes(StandardCharsets.ISO_8859_1)` at three locations (lines 171, 179, 196) to compute Digest auth response hashes. ISO-8859-1 silently replaces any character above U+00FF (Chinese, Japanese, Cyrillic, Arabic, Emoji, etc.) with 0x3F (`?`), causing all such characters to produce identical hash contributions. An attacker who knows a victim's username can bypass Digest authentication by replacing all non-Latin-1 characters in the password with `?` characters, since the collision password produces the same MD5-based Digest response hash as the original password. ### Details ### Root Cause In `jetty-core/jetty-client/src/main/java/org/eclipse/jetty/client/DigestAuthentication.java`, the `apply()` method computes the three Digest auth hashes (H(A1), H(A2), and the final response) using ISO-8859-1 character encoding: ```java // Line 171 — H(A1) String hashA1 = toHexString(digester.digest(a1.getBytes(StandardCharsets.ISO_8859_1))); // Line 179 — H(A2) String hashA2 = toHexString(digester.digest(a2.getBytes(StandardCharsets.ISO_8859_1))); // Line 196 — Final response hash final String hashA3 = toHexString(digester.digest(a3.getBytes(StandardCharsets.ISO_8859_1))); ``` ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) can only encode characters in the range U+0000–U+00FF. Any character outside this range — including all CJK, Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, Hangul, and emoji characters — is silently replaced with the byte `0x3F` (`?`). `String.getBytes(ISO_8859_1)` in Java performs this replacement without any warning or exception. ### PoC ``` Password: "我爱Java!密码123★" (7 non-Latin-1 characters) UTF-8 encoding: 45 bytes → MD5 H(A1) = 9a4e61484f228633d5d0f95d1bbb0a99 ISO-8859-1: 31 bytes → MD5 H(A1) = d60ddc903d71913bcc3ab4a94f7fc239 Collision "??...": 31 bytes → MD5 H(A1) = d60ddc903d71913bcc3ab4a94f7fc239 ← IDENTICAL ``` Multi-language confirmation — all four language passwords below produce the same hash: ``` Chinese (密码123) → H(A1) = db87f31e8d96cd15f9acec7eabdc4560 Korean (비번123) → H(A1) = db87f31e8d96cd15f9acec7eabdc4560 Cyrillic(аб123) → H(A1) = db87f31e8d96cd15f9acec7eabdc4560 Greek (αβ123) → H(A1) = db87f31e8d96cd15f9acec7eabdc4560 Attacker(??123) → H(A1) = db87f31e8d96cd15f9acec7eabdc4560 ← all collide! ``` ### Impact **Scenario 1: Authentication Bypass (Collision Attack)** If a service using Jetty for Digest authentication has a user with a non-Latin-1 password (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Russian), an attacker can authenticate as that user using a collision password where all non-Latin-1 characters are replaced with `?`: - Original password: `我爱Java!密码123★` - Collision password: `??Java!??123?` - **Both produce identical MD5 hashes under ISO-8859-1** → Authentication succeeds This affects any password containing characters > U+00FF, which covers: - Chinese (CJK): U+4E00–U+9FFF - Japanese (Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji): U+3040–U+30FF, U+4E00+ - Korean (Hangul): U+AC00–U+D7AF - Cyrillic: U+0400–U+04FF (Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, etc.) - Arabic: U+0600–U+06FF - Greek: U+0370–U+03FF - Latin Extended: U+0100–U+024F (accented European characters like ĉ, ğ, ñ when > U+00FF) - Emoji / Symbols > U+00FF **Scenario 2: Denial of Service for Non-Latin-1 Users** Most modern web applications store password hashes computed using UTF-8. When Jetty's Digest client computes a hash with ISO-8859-1, the bytes differ from what the server stored/expects. This means **any user with non-ASCII (Latin-1+) characters in their password can never successfully authenticate via Digest auth** — even the legitimate user. This is not just a security issue but a functional correctness bug that silently breaks authentication for most non-European-language users.

CWE-173Improper Handling of Alternate Encoding (opens in a new tab)
Variant weakness
The product does not properly handle when an input uses an alternate encoding that is valid for the control sphere to which the input is being sent.
Architecture and Design · Input Validation
Avoid making decisions based on names of resources (e.g. files) if those resources can have alternate names.
Implementation · Input Validation
Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does.
Implementation · Output Encoding
Use and specify an output encoding that can be handled by the downstream component that is reading the output. Common encodings include ISO-8859-1, UTF-7, and UTF-8.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Content Security Policy (opens in a new tab)
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
Deserialization (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V14.4.1 (opens in a new tab)
V1.5.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
Double Encoding (opens in a new tab)
Leverage Alternate Encoding (opens in a new tab)
Using Leading 'Ghost' Character Sequences to Bypass Input Filters (opens in a new tab)
Using Alternative IP Address Encodings (opens in a new tab)
Embedding NULL Bytes (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-303Incorrect Implementation of Authentication Algorithm (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessOWASP Top 10 A07:2025: Authentication Failures (opens in a new tab)
The requirements for the product dictate the use of an established authentication algorithm, but the implementation of the algorithm is incorrect.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
OWASP Authentication (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V2.8.5 (opens in a new tab)
V2.8.4 (opens in a new tab)
V9.2.3 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
Reflection Attack in Authentication Protocol (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

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Exploitation evidence

Timeline

What to do

Affected software

Description

WeaknessesCWE-173, CWE-303

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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