CVE-2024-38828
📋 TL;DR
Spring MVC applications with @RequestBody byte[] parameters are vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks where attackers can send specially crafted requests to consume excessive memory. This affects Spring Framework applications using Spring MVC with specific controller method signatures. The vulnerability allows resource exhaustion but not code execution.
💻 Affected Systems
- Spring Framework
- Spring Boot
- Applications using Spring MVC
⚠️ Manual Verification Required
This CVE does not have specific version information in our database, so automatic vulnerability detection cannot determine if your system is affected.
Why? The CVE database entry doesn't specify which versions are vulnerable (no version ranges provided by the vendor/NVD).
🔒 Custom verification scripts are available for registered users. Sign up free to download automated test scripts.
- Review the CVE details at NVD
- Check vendor security advisories for your specific version
- Test if the vulnerability is exploitable in your environment
- Consider updating to the latest version as a precaution
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Complete service unavailability due to memory exhaustion, requiring application restart and potentially affecting dependent services.
Likely Case
Degraded performance or temporary service disruption for affected endpoints, with automatic recovery after request processing fails.
If Mitigated
Minimal impact with proper request size limits and monitoring in place, potentially causing only individual request failures.
🎯 Exploit Status
Exploitation requires sending HTTP requests to vulnerable endpoints. No authentication bypass is needed if endpoints are publicly accessible.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: Spring Framework 6.1.19, 6.0.29, 5.3.34
Vendor Advisory: https://spring.io/security/cve-2024-38828
Restart Required: Yes
Instructions:
1. Update Spring Framework dependency to patched version. 2. Update Spring Boot if using Spring Boot Starter. 3. Rebuild and redeploy application. 4. Restart application server.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Request Size Limiting
allConfigure maximum request size limits in application server or Spring configuration
spring.servlet.multipart.max-file-size=10MB
spring.servlet.multipart.max-request-size=10MB
Web Application Firewall Rules
allImplement WAF rules to block or limit large HTTP requests
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement rate limiting on affected endpoints
- Deploy reverse proxy with request size limits before vulnerable application
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check Spring Framework version in pom.xml or build.gradle. Review controller methods for @RequestBody byte[] parameters.Check Version:
mvn dependency:tree | grep spring-core OR gradle dependencies | grep spring-coreVerify Fix Applied:
Verify Spring Framework version is 6.1.19+, 6.0.29+, or 5.3.34+. Test affected endpoints with large payloads.📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- OutOfMemoryError in logs
- Large request size warnings
- Slow response times from affected endpoints
Network Indicators:
- Unusually large HTTP POST requests to Spring MVC endpoints
- Spike in memory usage correlated with requests
SIEM Query:
source="application.logs" AND ("OutOfMemoryError" OR "java.lang.OutOfMemoryError") AND "Spring"