CVE-2019-14888 — undertow-core
HIGHCVE-2019-14888 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in io.undertow:undertow-core. A fix is available for io.undertow:undertow-core — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Undertow vulnerable to Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2019-14888 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 379,145 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
io.undertow:undertow-coreReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Maven packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
A vulnerability was found in the Undertow HTTP server in versions before 2.0.28.SP1 when listening on HTTPS. An attacker can target the HTTPS port to carry out a Denial Of Service (DOS) to make the service unavailable on SSL.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | io.undertow:undertow-core | all versions | 2.0.29.Finalio.undertow:undertow-core:2.0.29.Final |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for io.undertow:undertow-core, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update io.undertow:undertow-core to 2.0.29.Final or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2019-14888 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2019-14888 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2019-14888. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Enable HTTP2 (enable-http2="true") in the undertow's HTTPS settings.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2019-14888 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| EAP-CD 19 Tech Preview | undertow | RHSA-2020:2333 |
| Red Hat Data Grid 7.3.5 | undertow | RHSA-2020:0729 |
| Red Hat Fuse 7.7.0 | undertow | RHSA-2020:3192 |
| Red Hat JBoss EAP 7.2 | undertow-core | RHSA-2020:0164 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.1 EUS for RHEL 7 | eap7-undertow-0:1.4.18-12.SP12_redhat_00001.1.ep7.el7 | RHSA-2024:5856 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.2 for RHEL 6 | eap7-apache-cxf-0:3.2.11-1.redhat_00001.1.el6eap | RHSA-2020:0159 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.2 for RHEL 7 | eap7-apache-cxf-0:3.2.11-1.redhat_00001.1.el7eap | RHSA-2020:0160 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7.2 for RHEL 8 | eap7-apache-cxf-0:3.2.11-1.redhat_00001.1.el8eap | RHSA-2020:0161 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2019-14888 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2019-14888 across Maven dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.