CVE-2020-28923 Data Amplification in Play Framework

What is CVE-2020-28923?

CVE-2020-28923 is a low-severity denial of service vulnerability in n/a, published on 3 Dec 2020. An attacker needs administrator access to exploit it, with no action from the victim.

Official description

An issue was discovered in Play Framework 2.8.0 through 2.8.4. Carefully crafted JSON payloads sent as a form field lead to Data Amplification. This affects users migrating from a Play version prior to 2.8.0 that used the Play Java API to serialize classes with protected or private fields to JSON.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-28923?

2 open source packages ship an affected version, including com.typesafe.play:play. It affects 1 product.

Products include Lightbend Play Framework.

How do I fix CVE-2020-28923?

Upgrade com.typesafe.play:play to 2.8.5 or later.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2020-28923 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-28923 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in n/a

• CVE-2014-3630 XML external entity in n/a Critical 9.8
• CVE-2022-31018 Denial of service binding form from JSON in Play Framework High 7.5
• CVE-2020-26882 Data Amplification in Play Framework High 7.5
• CVE-2020-26883 Uncontrolled Recursion in Play Framework High 7.5
• CVE-2020-27196 Out-of-bounds Write in Play Framework High 7.5

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as GHSA-v9mf-jgq3-c28h.