CVE-2025-43772: Denial-of-Service via Memory Exhaustion in Liferay Kaleo Forms Admin — Vulnerability Analysis Report By CyberDudeBivash – Enterprise Web Application Security Authority

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Executive Summary

A high-severity denial-of-service vulnerability (CVE-2025-43772, CVSS 3.1 7.1) has been identified in the Kaleo Forms Admin component of Liferay Portal (7.0.0–7.4.3.4) and Liferay DXP (7.3 GA–update 27, 7.4 GA). The flaw enables remote attackers to send crafted HTTP requests that overload the portlet session storage, leading to system memory exhaustion and potential service degradation or complete outage. Organizations using affected versions are advised to apply mitigations immediately.
CVE Details SecurityVulnerability.io

1. Vulnerability Overview

Component Affected: Kaleo Forms Admin in Liferay Portal and DXP.
Vulnerability Type: CWE-400 — Uncontrolled Resource Consumption.
Impact: Attackers may exhaust server memory via manipulated requests, triggering DoS.
CVE Details cve.imfht.com
Affected Versions:
- Liferay Portal: 7.0.0 through 7.4.3.4
- Liferay DXP: 7.4 GA, 7.3 GA up to update 27, and older unsupported versions.
  CVE Details cve.imfht.com

2. Severity & Scoring

CVSS v3.1 Score: 7.1 (High)
- Network access, low complexity, no privilege or user interaction required, impact on availability only.
  CVE Details
Exploit Prediction Score (EPSS): Currently unavailable/not yet scored.
CVE Details Feedly

3. Attack Surface & Exploit Scenario

The flaw lies in improper handling of HTTP request parameters, allowing attackers to inject arbitrary data into the portlet session. Over time, this unchecked accumulation may deplete memory resources, causing application crashes or severe performance degradation for legitimate users.

Potential vectors include:

Automated bots flooding endpoints handling Kaleo Forms.
Deliberate targeting of session-based workflows in business applications using Liferay.

4. Mitigation Recommendations

Patch or Upgrade: Apply any vendor hotfixes or upgrade to a fixed version of Liferay as soon as available.
Input Limiting: Configure web application firewalls or reverse proxies to limit request parameter sizes and frequency.
Session Controls: Employ policies for session data limits (e.g., memory quotas, expiration enforcement).
Resource Monitoring: Setup alerts based on abnormal memory or thread usage at form-related endpoints.
Isolated Deployments: Consider running Kaleo Forms Admin in isolated JVMs to limit blast radius.

5. CyberDudeBivash Web Defense Framework (CDB-WebDef)

Rate Limit Enforcement – Prevent excessive parameter submission per session.
Session Size Alerting – Detect when session attribute growth exceeds thresholds.
Memory Health Dashboards – Monitor JVM heap and OOM indicators.
Canary Sessions – Inject synthetic session records to detect contamination.
Auto-Scaling & Failover – For clusters, maintain redundancy to absorb DoS attempts.

6. Strategic Perspective for CISOs & Operations

Although no public exploit has yet emerged, this vulnerability is trivially actionable for attackers seeking targeted disruption. Critical applications relying on Liferay DXP (portlets, workflows, internal forms) should be triaged immediately. With many Liferay instances running with heavy session usage, the risk of severe downtime escalates without proper mitigation.

7. CyberDudeBivash Call to Action

Free Diagnostic: Get a Web Application Resilience Scan to detect session-based DoS vectors.
Defense Toolkit: Download the CDB-WebDef Playbook including memory limits and WAF rules.
Daily Threat Intel: Monitor at cyberbivash.blogspot.com.
Enterprise Services: Automated patching, code audit, and runtime behavioral monitoring services are available through CyberDudeBivash.

8.

#LiferaySecurity #DenialOfService #CVE202543772 #WebAppSecurity #JavaPortalSecurity #EnterpriseSecurity #CyberDudeBivash

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