CVE-2020-11996
HighCVSS 7.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Very high risk98th percentile - higher than 98% of all known CVEs
Summary
A specially crafted sequence of HTTP/2 requests sent to Apache Tomcat 10.0.0-M1 to 10.0.0-M5, 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.35 and 8.5.0 to 8.5.55 could trigger high CPU usage for several seconds. If a sufficient number of such requests were made on concurrent HTTP/2 connections, the server could become unresponsive.
Risk Assessment
An attacker could cause a Denial of Service (DoS) by exhausting the CPU resources of the Tomcat server.
Recommendation
Upgrade Apache Tomcat to a version beyond the affected ranges (10.0.0-M6+, 9.0.36+, 8.5.56+).
Other vulnerabilities in Apache Tomcat
See all- CVE-2026-43513High
The vulnerability related to improper handling of case sensitivity in LockOutRealm in Apache Tomcat may lead to unauthorized access. It affects versions from 11.0.0-M1 to 11.0.21, from 10.1.0-M1 to 10.1.54, from 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.117, from 8.5.0 to 8.5.100, and from 7.0.0 to 7.0.109.
- CVE-2026-42498High
A vulnerability in Apache Tomcat related to the exposure of the HTTP Authentication Header to unexpected hosts during WebSocket authentication. It affects versions from 11.0.0-M1 to 11.0.21, 10.1.0-M1 to 10.1.54, 9.0.2 to 9.0.117, 8.5.24 to 8.5.100, and 7.0.83 to 7.0.109.
- CVE-2026-41284High
There is a vulnerability in Apache Tomcat related to resource allocation without limits or throttling. This affects versions from 11.0.0-M1 to 11.0.21, from 10.1.0-M1 to 10.1.54, and from 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.117.
- CVE-2025-48989High
A vulnerability in Apache Tomcat related to improper resource shutdown or release allows for a 'made you reset' attack. This affects versions from 11.0.0-M1 to 11.0.9, from 10.1.0-M1 to 10.1.43, and from 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.107.
- CVE-2017-7675High
The HTTP/2 implementation in Apache Tomcat from version 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.0.M21 and from 8.5.0 to 8.5.15 bypassed several security checks that prevented directory traversal attacks. It was therefore possible to bypass security constraints using a specially crafted URL.
- CVE-2016-6817High
The HTTP/2 header parser in Apache Tomcat versions 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.0.M11 and 8.5.0 to 8.5.6 entered an infinite loop if a header larger than the available buffer was received. This made a denial of service attack possible.
- CVE-2017-5664High
The error page mechanism of the Java Servlet Specification requires that the original request and response be forwarded to the error page. For static files, the expected behavior is to serve the content of the file as if processing a GET request, which was not implemented in Apache Tomcat versions 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.0.M20, 8.5.0 to 8.5.14, 8.0.0.RC1 to 8.0.43, and 7.0.0 to 7.0.77.
- CVE-2017-5650High
In Apache Tomcat versions 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.0.M18 and 8.5.0 to 8.5.12, the handling of an HTTP/2 GOAWAY frame did not close streams associated with that connection waiting for a WINDOW_UPDATE, potentially leading to exhaustion of available processing threads.
- CVE-2017-5647High
A bug in the handling of pipelined requests in Apache Tomcat causes the request to be lost when send file processing of the previous request is completed. This can lead to responses being sent for the wrong requests.
- CVE-2016-6816High
The code in Apache Tomcat versions from 6.0.0 to 9.0.0.M11 allowed parsing of the HTTP request line with invalid characters. This could be exploited in conjunction with a proxy that also accepted these characters to inject data into the HTTP response.
Original NVD description (English source)
A specially crafted sequence of HTTP/2 requests sent to Apache Tomcat 10.0.0-M1 to 10.0.0-M5, 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.35 and 8.5.0 to 8.5.55 could trigger high CPU usage for several seconds. If a sufficient number of such requests were made on concurrent HTTP/2 connections, the server could become unresponsive.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS

