Marvin Quitoriano (Customer) asked a question.

May 8, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Production site went down with HttpException: “A potentially dangerous Request.Path value was detected.” Please help us determine root cause and recommend a fix.

Hi,

 

Our Production website was down yesterday, and we suspect it may be related to the following error logged in the Event Viewer. Can you help us evaluate what might have gone wrong and how to prevent this from happening again?

 

Event Log Details:

  • Event code: 3005
  • Event message: An unhandled exception has occurred.
  • Event time: 5/7/2025 8:45:09 AM
  • Exception type: HttpException
  • Exception message:
  • A potentially dangerous Request.Path value was detected from the client (:).
  • Stack trace excerpt:
  1. at System.Web.HttpRequest.ValidateInputIfRequiredByConfig()
  2. at System.Web.HttpApplication.PipelineStepManager.ValidateHelper(HttpContext context)
  • Request URL:

 

https://[ourdomain]/Sitefinity/adminapp/content/newsitems/(create/dialog:confirm/allItems)?sf_provider=OpenAccessDataProvider&sf_culture=en

 

It appears the issue was triggered by a request involving the admin app and possibly a malformed or unsafe URL path.

 

We are on Sitefinity 15.1, and the site was working normally prior to this.

 

Can you advise:

  1. What could cause this error in the context of Sitefinity?
  2. How we can prevent this type of unhandled exception in the future?
  3. If any configuration changes or patching is recommended?

 

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

Best regards,

 

Marvin

 

  • 2 answers
  • 121 views

  • Kevin Reed (Springthrough)

    Hi @Marvin Quitoriano (Customer)​ ,

    I have seen that error from time to time, it doesn't seem like that is the type of error that would take a site down. Usually when I see that, it's because the user tried to browse directly to a route normally handled on the user's browser by the admin app java script.

     

    Can you give us some more information? How is the site hosted (Sitefinity Cloud, MS Azure, IIS on your own server, etc)? What do you mean by down? Was the site completely off, did it show a rocket ship / gears?

     

    If you're hosting the site on your own server, are there any other administrative events in the windows system log?

  • Sabrie Nedzhip (Enso DX)

    Hi @Marvin Quitoriano (Customer)​ ,

     

    I am sorry to hear that your website was down, however, the error you have found in the logs is not related and it is not responsible for the website to go down.

     

    In your case this error has occurred when a content editor was creating a news item and there was a dialog open (e.g. the html rich text editor code view) and the page was refreshed. in this case the ":" in the url is causing the issue. But if you click back the issue gets resolved and it is not a reason for the website to go down. It is only for this specific page and it doesn't affect the website in any way.

     

    If you want you can replicate the above issue with the below steps (it is harmless and safe):

     

    1. Go to Content -> News
    2. Create a News item
    3. Click on the content rich text field
    4. Then select the View Html option (or add a related field)
    5. You will see the "dialog:" part added in the url
    6. At that point if you refresh you will get the error

    To solve it - in the browser click to go back.

     

    Regarding the website going down - you can check for other errors in the logs as suggested by @Kevin Reed (Springthrough)​- including event logs.

     

    Regards,

    Sabrie