Medium

Jadx-gui vulnerable to swing HTML Denial of Service (DoS) attack

  • Disclosed: 20.10.2022
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 12:21

Impact

Using jadx-gui to open a special zip file with entry containing HTML sequence like <html><frame> will cause interface to get stuck and throw exceptions like:

java.lang.RuntimeException: Can't build aframeset, BranchElement(frameset) 1,3
:no ROWS or COLS defined.
	at java.desktop/javax.swing.text.html.HTMLEditorKit$HTMLFactory.create(HTMLEditorKit.java:1387)
	at java.desktop/javax.swing.plaf.basic.BasicHTML$BasicHTMLViewFactory.create(BasicHTML.java:379)
	at java.desktop/javax.swing.text.CompositeView.loadChildren(CompositeView.java:112)

References

https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/seccodeguide.html

Guideline 3-7 / INJECT-7: Disable HTML display in Swing components:

Many Swing pluggable look-and-feels interpret text in certain components starting with <html> as HTML. If the text is from an untrusted source, an adversary may craft the HTML such that other components appear to be present or to perform inclusion attacks.

To disable the HTML render feature, set the "html.disable" client property of each component to Boolean.TRUE (no other Boolean true instance will do).

java
label.putClientProperty("html.disable", true);

Affected software

Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.

PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
Java / Kotlin (Maven) io.github.skylot:jadx-plugins-api < 1.4.5 1.4.5

References

CVSS score 5.5/10
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness (CWE)
-
Platform
Java / Kotlin (Maven)
Package
io.github.skylot:jadx-plugins-api
Disclosed
20.10.2022
Updated
11.10.2026 12:21

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-3r7j-8mqh-6qhx - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: io.github.skylot:jadx-plugins-api

All published vulnerabilities of this package (Java / Kotlin (Maven)), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.

This is the only known vulnerability of this package.

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