Description

IBM DataPower Gateway 10.5.0.0 through 10.5.0.22, 10.6.1 through 10.6.6, 10.6.0.0 through 10.6.0.10, 11.0.0.0 through 11.0.0.2 could allow a remote attacker to cause a denial of service due to improper input validation.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "7.5",
  "pubDate": "2026-10-08T13:17:16.067Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-10-08T13:17:16.067Z",
  "executiveSummary": "This vulnerability involves an improper input validation flaw within IBM DataPower Gateway, which can be leveraged by a remote, unauthenticated attacker to trigger a Denial of Service (DoS) condition.\nThe vulnerability affects multiple versions of the product, including the 10.5.0.x, 10.6.0.x, 10.6.1.x, and 11.0.0.x release branches.\nThe root cause resides in the mechanism by which the gateway parses or processes incoming data streams. When presented with specifically crafted, malformed, or unexpected input, the application fails to validate the data structure correctly, leading to process instability.\nA successful exploitation results in the service becoming unavailable, potentially requiring administrative intervention or a service restart to restore normal operations. This poses a significant availability risk for infrastructure relying on DataPower for secure transaction processing.\nBecause this vulnerability is exploitable remotely over the network, it does not require local access or specific user privileges. Organizations should prioritize assessing exposure of the management and application-facing interfaces to external network segments.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability is characterized as an input validation failure within the core processing modules of IBM DataPower Gateway. Improper validation occurs when the gateway receives input that deviates from expected schema or format definitions but is not rejected before reaching sensitive internal processing functions.\nAffected software versions include IBM DataPower Gateway 10.5.0.0 through 10.5.0.22, 10.6.1 through 10.6.6, 10.6.0.0 through 10.6.0.10, and 11.0.0.0 through 11.0.0.2.\nThe technical root cause involves the handling of serialized data or protocol-specific headers. When the DataPower appliance encounters a malformed input packet, the underlying subsystem fails to implement adequate bounds checking or type validation. This failure leads to an unhandled exception or a resource exhaustion condition during the decoding phase of the request handling lifecycle.\nThe attack flow follows a predictable pattern: 1) The attacker initiates a network connection to a vulnerable port exposed by the DataPower Gateway. 2) The attacker transmits a crafted payload designed to trigger the identified input validation flaw. 3) The gateway’s internal processing engine attempts to interpret the payload. 4) Due to the lack of sufficient input sanitization, the processing engine encounters a state that violates the integrity of its memory management or execution flow. 5) This condition causes the targeted service or the entire gateway process to crash or enter an infinite loop, resulting in a Denial of Service.\nThe impact is primarily localized to the availability of the gateway. As a gateway appliance typically acts as an intermediary for mission-critical traffic, such an outage disrupts the flow of API traffic, web services, and secure communication channels. The vulnerability does not appear to involve arbitrary code execution (ACE) or unauthorized data exfiltration based on the reported input validation nature of the flaw; however, the resulting service interruption necessitates immediate remediation.\nGiven that this vulnerability is accessible via remote network interaction, it bypasses traditional perimeter defenses that do not perform deep packet inspection (DPI) or strict protocol validation. Systems that are Internet-facing or reachable from untrusted internal segments are at the highest risk. Mitigation requires the application of vendor-supplied firmware updates, as the nature of the flaw is systemic to the application's binary logic rather than a configuration error."
}