Description

Spring Framework, version 5.1, versions 5.0.x prior to 5.0.10, versions 4.3.x prior to 4.3.20, and older unsupported versions on the 4.2.x branch provide support for range requests when serving static resources through the ResourceHttpRequestHandler, or starting in 5.0 when an annotated controller returns an org.springframework.core.io.Resource. A malicious user (or attacker) can add a range header with a high number of ranges, or with wide ranges that overlap, or both, for a denial of service attack.

This vulnerability affects applications that depend on either spring-webmvc or spring-webflux. Such applications must also have a registration for serving static resources (e.g. JS, CSS, images, and others), or have an annotated controller that returns an org.springframework.core.io.Resource.

Spring Boot applications that depend on spring-boot-starter-web or spring-boot-starter-webflux are ready to serve static resources out of the box and are therefore vulnerable.

Affected Spring Products and Versions

Spring Framework 5.1
Spring Framework 5.0.0 to 5.0.9
Spring Framework 4.3 to 4.3.19
Older unsupported versions going back to 4.2 are also affected

Mitigation

Users of affected versions should apply the following mitigation:

5.1 users should upgrade to 5.1.1
5.0.x users should upgrade to 5.0.10
4.3.x users should upgrade to 4.3.20
4.2.x users should upgrade to a supported branch.

No further mitigation steps are necessary.

Note the following when evaluating the impact:

Support for Range requests was introduced in version 4.2. Therefore versions prior to 4.2 are not affected by this issue.
Support for returning an org.springfamework.core.io.Resource from an annotated controller was introduced in 5.0. Therefore versions prior to 5.0 can only be impacted through a registration to serve static resources.