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OpenAdvisories
Medium · 5.3 CVE-2023-3042 EUVD-2023-43734GHSA-4473-7649-rj9x

CNA SHORTNAME: dotCMSORG UUID: 5b9d93f2-25c7-46b4-ab60-d201718c9dd8

Published Oct 17, 2023 · Updated Jun 12, 2025 · Assigned by dotCMS

Description

In dotCMS, versions mentioned, a flaw in the NormalizationFilter does not strip double slashes (//) from URLs, potentially enabling bypasses for XSS and access controls. An example affected URL is https://demo.dotcms.com//html/portlet/ext/files/edit_text_inc.jsp , which should return a 404 response but didn't.

The oversight in the default invalid URL character list can be viewed at the provided GitHub link https://github.com/dotCMS/core/blob/master/dotCMS/src/main/java/com/dotcms/filters/NormalizationFilter.java#L37 . 

To mitigate, users can block URLs with double slashes at firewalls or utilize dotCMS config variables.

Specifically, they can use the DOT_URI_NORMALIZATION_FORBIDDEN_STRINGS environmental variable to add // to the list of invalid strings.

Additionally, the DOT_URI_NORMALIZATION_FORBIDDEN_REGEX variable offers more detailed control, for instance, to block //html.* URLs.

Fix Version:23.06+, LTS 22.03.7+, LTS 23.01.4+

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
dotCMS dotCMS core 5.3.8, 21.06, 22.03, 23.01 —

References