CVE-2026-14509 in DataPower Gateway
Summary
by MITRE • 10/08/2026
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 could allow a remote attacker to cause a denial of service due to algorithmic complexity in linked-list traversal.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/08/2026
The vulnerability identified in IBM DataPower Gateway versions ranging from 10.5.0.0 through 10.5.0.22, 10.6.1 through 10.6.6, and specific builds of the 10.6.0.x and 11.0.0.x series represents a significant risk to service availability due to algorithmic complexity issues during linked-list traversal operations. This flaw is categorized under CWE-400, which describes conditions where resources are not properly limited before consumption, leading to resource exhaustion or denial of service. The core technical issue stems from the application's handling of data structures that utilize linked lists for processing incoming requests or internal state management. When an attacker crafts a request containing specially designed input parameters, they can trigger traversal algorithms with quadratic time complexity relative to the size of the input structure rather than linear time. This deviation from expected performance characteristics allows malicious actors to force the gateway into computationally expensive operations that consume disproportionate amounts of CPU cycles and memory resources.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability enables a remote denial-of-service attack without requiring authentication in many configurations, although some variants may require specific access privileges depending on the exact service endpoint targeted. The impact is characterized by severe performance degradation or complete unresponsiveness of the IBM DataPower Gateway appliance. Since these gateways often serve as critical entry points for enterprise API traffic and web services, a successful exploitation can disrupt business-critical applications that rely on low-latency responses. Attackers can sustain this attack vector by continuously sending crafted packets designed to maximize linked-list traversal depth or complexity, effectively creating a resource exhaustion scenario that renders the gateway unable to process legitimate user requests. This aligns with MITRE ATT&CK technique T1496, which covers Resource Hijacking for Denial of Service, specifically focusing on exhausting computational resources through inefficient algorithmic execution paths.
The technical mechanism involves the manipulation of data structures where nodes are linked in a manner that allows an attacker to control the traversal path or length significantly beyond normal operational limits. In standard operations, linked-list traversals are bounded by expected input sizes and validated against predefined thresholds. However, due to insufficient validation or bounds checking within the affected versions, malicious inputs can construct scenarios where the traversal logic enters deep recursive loops or iterates through excessively long chains of nodes. This results in a spike in CPU utilization that can lead to system instability, crash services running on the appliance, or trigger automatic failover mechanisms if high-availability clusters are configured but not properly hardened against such resource exhaustion attacks. The lack of effective rate limiting or input sanitization for these specific traversal operations exacerbates the risk, allowing even low-bandwidth attackers to cause significant disruption by sending small amounts of data that require extensive processing time on the server side.
Mitigation strategies primarily involve applying vendor-provided patches and updates immediately to bring all IBM DataPower Gateway instances within the affected version ranges up to their latest secure releases. Organizations should verify their current software versions against the provided list, which includes 10.5.x through 10.6.x and early builds of 11.0.x, ensuring that no legacy or unpatched systems remain in production environments. In addition to patching, network-level controls such as Web Application Firewalls can be configured to detect and block anomalous request patterns associated with algorithmic complexity attacks, although this is a compensatory control rather than a fix for the underlying code flaw. Security teams should also implement strict rate limiting on API endpoints managed by DataPower Gateway to mitigate the impact of any potential exploitation attempts while patches are being deployed. Regular vulnerability scanning and penetration testing focused on input validation and resource management will help identify similar weaknesses in other components of the infrastructure, ensuring a more resilient security posture against application-layer denial-of-service threats.