Digital Experience PlatformApplication · Liferay

CVE-2023-33950

HIGH · 7.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2023-05-24
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to after 7.4.3.76 or later.
See remediation →
84/100
Remediation priority · High
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Pattern Redirects in Liferay Portal 7.4.3.48 through 7.4.3.76, and Liferay DXP 7.4 update 48 through 76 allows regular expressions that are vulnerable to ReDoS attacks to be used as patterns, which allows remote attackers to consume an excessive amount of server resources via crafted request URLs.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis · moderate confidence

Lifera Portal and DXP 7.4 versions contain a ReDoS (Regular Expression Denial of Service) vulnerability in the Pattern Redirects feature. The redirect pattern matching allows vulnerable regular expressions that can be exploited by crafted request URLs, causing catastrophic backtracking and excessive server resource consumption.

MitigationUpgrade to Lifera Portal 7.4.3.77+, DXP 7.4 update 77+, or implement regex timeout limits and input validation on redirect patterns.

Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
Digital Experience PlatformApplication
Affected:= 7.4
Liferay PortalApplication
Affected:>= 7.4.3.48, <= 7.4.3.76

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.

dbcve checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Identify LiferA product type and version
    Access the LiferA Control Panel, typically at /group/control_panel, and navigate to Server Administration or Portal Settings to view the installed version. Alternatively, check the portal-ext.properties file or the OSGi bundle version information.
    Affected if The product is LiferA Portal version 7.4.3.48 through 7.4.3.76, or LiferA DXP version 7.4 (exact match)
  2. Confirm Pattern Redirects feature is in use
    Navigate to Site Settings or Redirects configuration in the LiferA Control Panel. Check if any redirect patterns have been configured under the Pattern Redirects section.
    Affected if Redirect patterns are configured and actively used in the portal
  3. Inspect redirect pattern regex syntax
    Review each configured redirect pattern in the Pattern Redirects settings. Look for patterns containing nested quantifiers, overlapping alternations, or excessive repetition such as (.*)*, (a+)+, [a-zA-Z]+.*, or multiple wildcard repetitions.
    Affected if Any configured redirect pattern contains regex constructs prone to catastrophic backtracking
  4. Check for performance impact from redirect processing
    Analyze server logs and monitoring metrics for slow redirect processing, high CPU usage during redirect pattern matching, or request timeouts correlated with URLs containing the redirect pattern prefix.
    Affected if Requests to URLs matching redirect patterns cause disproportionate server response times or resource spikes

A user is affected if they run LiferA Portal 7.4.3.48-76 or DXP 7.4, and have Pattern Redirects configured with vulnerable regex patterns that can be triggered by crafted request URLs.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to a release after 7.4.3.76
Interim mitigation

Upgrade to Lifera Portal 7.4.3.77+, DXP 7.4 update 77+, or implement regex timeout limits and input validation on redirect patterns.

Recommended fix Moderate confidence

Liferay Portal 7.4.3.77+ or Liferay DXP 7.4 update 77+ (latest 7.4.x stable release)

  1. 1. Back up your current Liferay Portal/DXP installation and database
  2. 2. Review the LIFIERAY upgrade guide for your version at https://learn.liferiay.com/
  3. 3. Download Liferay Portal 7.4.3.77 or later from https://www.liferiay.com/downloads
  4. 4. Test the upgrade in a staging environment before production deployment
  5. 5. Execute the upgrade following Liferay's standard upgrade procedures
  6. 6. Verify that the Pattern Redirects feature functions correctly post-upgrade
  7. 7. Deploy to production once validation is complete
Caveat Review Liferay 7.4.3.77 release notes for any breaking changes between your current version and the target version

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

Fix this in Digital Experience Platform Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation2.0 h
  • Implementation1.0 h
  • Testing4.0 h
  • Review / QA1.0 h
8.0 hours of engineering $1,360
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Scan for this in your stack

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2023-33950 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data