CVE-2026-76000 in ColdFusion
Summary
by MITRE • 09/08/2026
ColdFusion is affected by an Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability that could lead to application denial-of-service. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to exhaust system resources, resulting in an application denial-of-service condition. Exploitation of this issue does not require user interaction.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/08/2026
The identified vulnerability represents a critical security flaw within the Adobe ColdFusion application server environment, specifically categorized as an Uncontrolled Resource Consumption issue. This type of weakness allows external actors to trigger actions that consume excessive amounts of system resources such as CPU cycles, memory allocation, or network bandwidth without appropriate limits being enforced by the underlying software architecture. The core technical failure lies in the absence of robust input validation and resource quota management mechanisms when processing specific requests directed at vulnerable endpoints within the ColdFusion runtime. Because the application server does not adequately throttle or limit the computational effort required to handle these inputs, a single request can initiate processes that scale disproportionately relative to the input size or complexity, leading to rapid depletion of available system capacity.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability poses a severe risk to service availability and business continuity. An attacker who successfully exploits this flaw does not need any form of user interaction, authentication credentials, or social engineering tactics to initiate the attack vector. This characteristic significantly lowers the barrier for exploitation, allowing even unauthenticated adversaries to launch denial-of-service attacks against targeted infrastructure. The immediate impact is a degradation in performance that can escalate into a complete application outage as system resources are exhausted. During such an event, legitimate users experience timeouts, failed transactions, and inability to access critical business applications hosted on the affected ColdFusion instances, resulting in potential financial loss and reputational damage for the organization relying on these services.
In terms of industry standard classification frameworks, this vulnerability aligns with CWE-400, which describes Uncontrolled Resource Consumption. This category encompasses scenarios where a software product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource, thereby enabling an attacker to cause a denial-of-service condition. Furthermore, within the MITRE ATT&CK framework, this behavior corresponds to techniques associated with Denial of Service (T1499), specifically those involving endpoint or network exhaustion through volumetric attacks or application-layer flooding. The lack of rate limiting and resource caps in ColdFusion's handling of certain requests creates an environment where automated tools can easily generate the necessary traffic patterns to trigger this flaw, making it a high-priority target for opportunistic attackers seeking to disrupt services without needing elevated privileges.
To mitigate this vulnerability, organizations must prioritize applying the latest security patches provided by Adobe that address these specific resource consumption flaws in ColdFusion versions. It is essential to ensure that all instances are updated to a version where input validation and resource limits have been rigorously tested and implemented. In addition to patching, defensive measures should include implementing web application firewalls (WAF) configured with rulesets designed to detect and block anomalous request patterns indicative of resource exhaustion attacks. Rate limiting policies at the network or load balancer level can also help mitigate the impact by capping the number of requests a single source IP address can make within a given timeframe, thereby preventing any one entity from monopolizing server resources. Regular security assessments and penetration testing should be conducted to identify similar uncontrolled resource consumption weaknesses across other components of the application stack.