CVE-2026-10050

Digest authentication lossy encoding

Published Aug 4, 2026 CVSS 4.0 · 8.7 High EPSS < 1% KEV · Not listed
Description
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.

Remediation

No solution or workaround provided in the CVE record

Tracking

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Advisories

Source ID Title
Github GHSA Github GHSA GHSA-2fvj-hgj9-j2gr Eclipse Jetty Digest Authentication: ISO-8859-1 lossy encoding allows authentication bypass via character substitution
History
Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Eclipse
Eclipse jetty
Vendors & Products Eclipse
Eclipse jetty
Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'yes', 'Exploitation': 'poc', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description 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.
Title Digest authentication lossy encoding
Weaknesses CWE-173
CWE-303
References
Metrics cvssV4_0

{'score': 8.7, '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'}

Weaknesses

Sources

Status
PUBLISHED
Assigner
eclipse
Published
Updated
Aug 4, 2026, 12:46 PM
Reserved
May 29, 2026, 7:26 AM
Status
Analyzed
Published
Aug 4, 2026, 11:22 AM
Modified
Aug 8, 2026, 12:38 AM