Security readout for executives and security teams
Plain-English summary
This vulnerability lets an attacker make affected Vaadin applications spend excessive processing time validating specially crafted email input. The business impact is availability: public forms using Vaadin EmailField could become slow or unavailable without the attacker needing an account.
Executive priority
Treat this as a high-priority availability risk for affected public Vaadin applications. It is not a data theft issue, but it can disrupt customer-facing workflows if vulnerable forms are exposed.
Technical view
CVE-2021-31405 is a ReDoS issue in Vaadin EmailField validation. Affected com.vaadin:vaadin-text-field-flow versions are 2.0.4 through 2.3.2 and 3.0.0 through 4.0.2, corresponding to Vaadin 14.0.6-14.4.3 and 15.0.0-17.0.10. CVSS is 7.5, availability-only.
Likely exposure
Exposure is most likely in Java web applications using affected Vaadin versions with EmailField on public or unauthenticated forms, such as signup, contact, account recovery, or profile pages.
Exploitation context
The provided sources do not show active exploitation, and the CVE is not listed as KEV. Exploitation requires submitting malicious email values to affected EmailField validation, causing uncontrolled resource consumption.
Researcher notes
The issue maps to CWE-400 and CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H. Evidence supports ReDoS in EmailField validation, but the bundle does not provide exploit payloads, operational indicators, or exact fixed version numbers.
Mitigation direction
- Inventory Vaadin and vaadin-text-field-flow dependency versions across applications.
- Upgrade affected Vaadin components according to Vaadin’s advisory and related fix PR.
- Prioritize internet-facing forms that accept email addresses without authentication.
- Apply rate limiting or request throttling where vulnerable forms cannot be upgraded quickly.
- Monitor CPU saturation and slow requests around email-validation workflows.
Validation and detection
- Confirm dependency trees do not include affected vaadin-text-field-flow ranges.
- Identify routes and pages using Vaadin EmailField components.
- Review APM and logs for abnormal CPU or latency on email form submissions.
- Verify upgraded builds use vendor-fixed component versions.
- Regression-test email forms for normal validation behavior after upgrade.
Public sources used
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Conservative CVE-to-ATT&CK context
These mappings and lookup hints may be relevant to the vulnerability behavior, CWE, affected product, or exposure path. Glexia-inferred context is not an official MITRE, ATT&CK, CWE, or CVE Program mapping.
ATT&CK lookup starting points
Use these exact CWE pages and searches to review the Glexia ATT&CK library from this CVE's weakness and description context.
CWE-400: Exact CWE lookup
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Open ATT&CK lookupCVE-2021-31405 mapping review
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Open ATT&CK lookup- Severity
- High
- CVSS
- 7.5 (3.1)
- Known Exploited
- No
- Published
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CNA and ADP enrichment extracted from CVE v5
These fields come from the CVE record and ADP containers, not from Glexia's Take. They preserve time-varying source decisions such as CISA SSVC, KEV status, CVSS metrics, and provider references.
CVSS vector scores
1 official scoreWe collect every scored CVSS vector available in the official CNA and ADP containers. When more than one version is present, the table keeps the source vectors side by side instead of collapsing them into the highest score.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H3.93.6Primary CVE scoreVulnerability scoring details
Base CVSS 3.1 score
7.5HighVector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Source materials
- CVE List V5 sourceCVE List V5
- https://vaadin.com/security/cve-2021-31405CVE reference · x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/vaadin/flow-components/pull/442CVE reference · x_refsource_MISC
Products and packages named in the record
CWE details
CWE links open Glexia weakness intelligence pages with official CWE context, developer remediation guidance, and related CVE mappings.
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.