In Eclipse Jetty, the Digest authentication server-side component uses ISO-8859-1 to encode the password as bytes.
This was done because the initial specification for HTTP did not specify explicitly a charset, and it was assumed to be ISO-8859-1 for historical reasons.
If the password contains characters that cannot be represented in ISO-8859-1, they are silently replaced by `?`. This happens with passwords that contain Chinese, Cyrillic or Greek characters, for example: `αβ123` converts to `??123`.
An attacker can send a request with a digest `Authorization` header crafted with a password made of only `?` characters; the server would match any password of the same length that contains non-ISO-8859-1 characters.
Recent HTTP Digest [RFC-7616](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7616) supports a `charset` parameters that defaults to UTF-8 that allows for correct encoding/decoding of passwords.
CVSS Details
- CVSS 4.0 Base Score: 8.7 (HIGH)
- CVSS 4.0 Vector: (CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X)
- CVSS 3.1 Base Score: 9.1
- CVSS 3.1 Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H)
Covered by Rapid7
| Product | Vendor Advisory | Solution File | Added | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Redhat_linux | — | No solution exists | Aug 13, 2026 | Jul 16, 2026 |
Prioritise with Active Threat Intelligence
With curated Threat Intelligence, you can see which vulnerabilities truly put you at risk, prioritize what matters most, and act before attackers do.
Explore Intelligence Hub