CVE-2021-22696 - CVE House
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Status published High CVE-2021-22696

OAuth 2 authorization service vulnerable to DDos attacks

Vulnerability Description

CXF supports (via JwtRequestCodeFilter) passing OAuth 2 parameters via a JWT token as opposed to query parameters (see: The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework: JWT Secured Authorization Request (JAR)). Instead of sending a JWT token as a "request" parameter, the spec also supports specifying a URI from which to retrieve a JWT token from via the "request_uri" parameter. CXF was not validating the "request_uri" parameter (apart from ensuring it uses "https) and was making a REST request to the parameter in the request to retrieve a token. This means that CXF was vulnerable to DDos attacks on the authorization server, as specified in section 10.4.1 of the spec. This issue affects Apache CXF versions prior to 3.4.3; Apache CXF versions prior to 3.3.10.

Impact Analysis

Refer to official advisory for detailed impact metrics.

Remediation

Ensure systems are updated to the latest vendor-supplied patch levels.

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Credits & Attribution

No credits recorded in the NVD database.

Affected Vendor

Apache Software Foundation

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Affected Software

Apache CXF
Vulnerable Versions:
unspecified

Timeline

Official Publish: April 2nd, 2021
Last Modified: February 13th, 2025
Added to House: July 21st, 2026

CVSS Vectors

V3: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Weaknesses (CWE)