CVE-2026-68981
Apache Nifi 1.5.0 – 2.11.0
Raw vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:L/VA:H/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:P/AU:Y/R:U/V:C/RE:M/U:AmberCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2026-68981 is a high-severity Data Amplification (CWE-409) vulnerability in Apache Nifi. Its CVSS base score is 8.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked at the 43th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SI-10 (Information Input Validation) and SC-5 (Denial-of-service Protection) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-52423
Vulnerability Data
Apache NiFi 1.5.0 through 2.10.0 support gzip-encoded HTTP requests for the application REST API using a Jersey encoding filter. The framework enforced a configurable maximum request size on the compressed payload rather than the decompressed output, allowing a malicious client…
more
to send crafted requests that could consume excessive amounts of memory. Upgrading to Apache NiFi 2.11.0 is the recommended mitigation, which relocates response compression to Jetty Server and disables decompression of gzip-encoded HTTP requests.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Input validation can reject or limit decompression of data whose expansion ratio exceeds safe thresholds.
DoS protection limits the resource-exhaustion impact when a decompression bomb is processed.
Resource allocation controls bound memory/CPU consumption that a data-amplification attack would otherwise exhaust.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Runtime monitoring of compute resources can detect exhaustion caused by decompression bombs.
Capacity planning and monitoring directly limits the availability impact of data-amplification attacks.
Secure-development practices include input-validation and resource-limit checks that prevent improper handling of compressed data.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Redundancy helps availability but does not address the root cause of the weakness.
Monitoring can detect anomalous resource usage but does not prevent the weakness.
Secure development lifecycle includes input validation and resource-limit checks that mitigate data-amplification attacks.
Application security requirements can mandate limits on decompression size and ratio.
Secure architecture principles encourage defensive design against resource-exhaustion threats.
Secure coding practices directly require bounds checking and safe handling of compressed data.