GHSA-2fvj-hgj9-j2gr Eclipse Jetty Digest Authentication: ISO-8859-1 lossy encoding allows authentication bypass via character substitution

• Maven org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-security: >= 9.4.0.v20161208, < 9.4.63 → fixed in 9.4.63 • Maven org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-security: >= 10.0.0, < 10.0.31 → fixed in 10.0.31 • Maven org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-security: >= 11.0.0, < 11.0.31 → fixed in 11.0.31 • Maven org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-security: >= 12.0.0, < 12.0.36 → fixed in 12.0.36 • Maven org.eclipse.jetty.ee8:jetty-ee8-security: >= 12.0.0, < 12.0.36 → fixed in 12.0.36 • Maven org.eclipse.jetty.ee9:jetty-ee9-security: >= 12.0.0, < 12.0.36 → fixed in 12.0.36 • Maven org.eclipse.jetty:jetty-security: >= 12.1.0, < 12.1.10 → fixed in 12.1.10 • Maven org.eclipse.jetty.ee8:jetty-ee8-security: >= 12.1.0, < 12.1.10 → fixed in 12.1.10 • Maven org.eclipse.jetty.ee9:jetty-ee9-security: >= 12.1.0, < 12.1.10 → fixed in 12.1.10

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.