New vulnerabilities in Spring libraries: how to know if you are at risk and what to do
Recently, Spring libraries, one of the most popular libraries in the Java community, disclosed 2 vulnerabilities related to Remote Code Execution (RCE). To help make it easier for you to understand if you are at risk for either vulnerability and what actions to take, we’ve broken down the known details for “Spring4Shell” and “Spring Cloud Function.”
Vulnerability 1 - “Spring4Shell” (CVE-2022-22965)
On March 29th, 2022, the community discovered a series of tweets containing screenshots of a proof of concept of an exploit targeting Spring Core (SC) , which allows for Remote Code Execution for all versions of Spring Core, including the most recently released version, 5.3.17.
What applications are at risk?
Currently, only applications being hosted on Tomcat are confirmed to be at risk to this new exploit. While the exploitation has not been demonstrated as successful against the Embedded Tomcat Servlet Container, or any other non-Tomcat hosted applications, that does not rule out the possibility of the threat proving successful in the future to these frameworks.
Spring released an official statement about the vulnerability, which clarifies that the following conditions need to be met to be vulnerable, according to the current understanding of the vulnerability:
- JDK 9 or higher
- Apache Tomcat as the Servlet container
- Packaged as a traditional WAR (in contrast to a Spring Boot executable jar)
- spring-webmvc or spring-webflux dependency
- Spring Framework versions 5.3.0 to 5.3.17, 5.2.0 to 5.2.19, and older versions
How does the “Spring4Shell” exploitation work?
The exploitation relies on using “Data Binding” (org.springframework.web.bind.WebDataBinder) in requests that make use of Plain Old Java Objects (POJO) in the method signature:
Where the Foo class is a POJO class, which could be defined as the following. Note that the actual class isn’t important, as long as it’s loaded by the Class Loader.
When a request is handled by a method like this, the Class Loader is used to resolve the class. The Class Loader is responsible for loading classes at runtime, without having to preload all possible types into memory first. It figures out which .jar file to load when a new class is used.
You can find the most up to date and in-depth information about this vulnerability directly from Spring on their blogpost, including potential fixes or workarounds.
Vulnerability 2 - Spring Cloud Function (CVE-2022-22963)
On March 27th 2022, Cyber Kendra disclosed details about a 0-day Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability in Spring Cloud Functions for which no patch existed. The vulnerability was assigned the ID CVE-2022-22963: Spring Expression Resource Access Vulnerability.
What applications are at risk?
The vulnerability affected applications under these conditions:
- JDK 9 or newer
- Spring Cloud Functions version 3.1.6 (or lower), 3.2.2 (or lower), or any unsupported version
How does the exploitation work?
Spring Cloud Function provides the capability for developers to configure how routing is handled through the property spring.cloud.function.routing-expression, usually done through configuration, or code. This is a powerful capability that accepts the “Spring Expression Language” (SpEL). Through this 0-day vulnerability, we have learned that this property could be set through the HTTP headers of a request, which meant that an attacker could embed SpEL code directly in their HTTP request to a RoutingFunction endpoint, and thus execute arbitrary code.
What steps should users take to mitigate risk?
Spring has released versions 3.1.7 and 3.2.3 to address this issue by not allowing this property to be set through HTTP headers, mitigating the vulnerability. After upgrading to either version, no additional steps are necessary.
Interested in learning more about how we help developers write more secure code? Book a demo or explore our free secure coding guidelines on secure code coach.
Sources
- https://www.lunasec.io/docs/blog/spring-rce-vulnerabilities/
- https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/2022/03/30/spring4shell-zero-day-vulnerability-in-spring-framework/
Recently, Spring libraries, one of the most popular libraries in the Java community, disclosed 2 vulnerabilities related to Remote Code Execution (RCE). We’ve broken down the known details for “Spring4Shell” and “Spring Cloud Function” to help you understand if you're at risk and what to do if you are.
Secure Code Warrior is here for your organization to help you secure code across the entire software development lifecycle and create a culture in which cybersecurity is top of mind. Whether you’re an AppSec Manager, Developer, CISO, or anyone involved in security, we can help your organization reduce risks associated with insecure code.
Book a demo
Recently, Spring libraries, one of the most popular libraries in the Java community, disclosed 2 vulnerabilities related to Remote Code Execution (RCE). To help make it easier for you to understand if you are at risk for either vulnerability and what actions to take, we’ve broken down the known details for “Spring4Shell” and “Spring Cloud Function.”
Vulnerability 1 - “Spring4Shell” (CVE-2022-22965)
On March 29th, 2022, the community discovered a series of tweets containing screenshots of a proof of concept of an exploit targeting Spring Core (SC) , which allows for Remote Code Execution for all versions of Spring Core, including the most recently released version, 5.3.17.
What applications are at risk?
Currently, only applications being hosted on Tomcat are confirmed to be at risk to this new exploit. While the exploitation has not been demonstrated as successful against the Embedded Tomcat Servlet Container, or any other non-Tomcat hosted applications, that does not rule out the possibility of the threat proving successful in the future to these frameworks.
Spring released an official statement about the vulnerability, which clarifies that the following conditions need to be met to be vulnerable, according to the current understanding of the vulnerability:
- JDK 9 or higher
- Apache Tomcat as the Servlet container
- Packaged as a traditional WAR (in contrast to a Spring Boot executable jar)
- spring-webmvc or spring-webflux dependency
- Spring Framework versions 5.3.0 to 5.3.17, 5.2.0 to 5.2.19, and older versions
How does the “Spring4Shell” exploitation work?
The exploitation relies on using “Data Binding” (org.springframework.web.bind.WebDataBinder) in requests that make use of Plain Old Java Objects (POJO) in the method signature:
Where the Foo class is a POJO class, which could be defined as the following. Note that the actual class isn’t important, as long as it’s loaded by the Class Loader.
When a request is handled by a method like this, the Class Loader is used to resolve the class. The Class Loader is responsible for loading classes at runtime, without having to preload all possible types into memory first. It figures out which .jar file to load when a new class is used.
You can find the most up to date and in-depth information about this vulnerability directly from Spring on their blogpost, including potential fixes or workarounds.
Vulnerability 2 - Spring Cloud Function (CVE-2022-22963)
On March 27th 2022, Cyber Kendra disclosed details about a 0-day Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability in Spring Cloud Functions for which no patch existed. The vulnerability was assigned the ID CVE-2022-22963: Spring Expression Resource Access Vulnerability.
What applications are at risk?
The vulnerability affected applications under these conditions:
- JDK 9 or newer
- Spring Cloud Functions version 3.1.6 (or lower), 3.2.2 (or lower), or any unsupported version
How does the exploitation work?
Spring Cloud Function provides the capability for developers to configure how routing is handled through the property spring.cloud.function.routing-expression, usually done through configuration, or code. This is a powerful capability that accepts the “Spring Expression Language” (SpEL). Through this 0-day vulnerability, we have learned that this property could be set through the HTTP headers of a request, which meant that an attacker could embed SpEL code directly in their HTTP request to a RoutingFunction endpoint, and thus execute arbitrary code.
What steps should users take to mitigate risk?
Spring has released versions 3.1.7 and 3.2.3 to address this issue by not allowing this property to be set through HTTP headers, mitigating the vulnerability. After upgrading to either version, no additional steps are necessary.
Interested in learning more about how we help developers write more secure code? Book a demo or explore our free secure coding guidelines on secure code coach.
Sources
- https://www.lunasec.io/docs/blog/spring-rce-vulnerabilities/
- https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/2022/03/30/spring4shell-zero-day-vulnerability-in-spring-framework/
Recently, Spring libraries, one of the most popular libraries in the Java community, disclosed 2 vulnerabilities related to Remote Code Execution (RCE). To help make it easier for you to understand if you are at risk for either vulnerability and what actions to take, we’ve broken down the known details for “Spring4Shell” and “Spring Cloud Function.”
Vulnerability 1 - “Spring4Shell” (CVE-2022-22965)
On March 29th, 2022, the community discovered a series of tweets containing screenshots of a proof of concept of an exploit targeting Spring Core (SC) , which allows for Remote Code Execution for all versions of Spring Core, including the most recently released version, 5.3.17.
What applications are at risk?
Currently, only applications being hosted on Tomcat are confirmed to be at risk to this new exploit. While the exploitation has not been demonstrated as successful against the Embedded Tomcat Servlet Container, or any other non-Tomcat hosted applications, that does not rule out the possibility of the threat proving successful in the future to these frameworks.
Spring released an official statement about the vulnerability, which clarifies that the following conditions need to be met to be vulnerable, according to the current understanding of the vulnerability:
- JDK 9 or higher
- Apache Tomcat as the Servlet container
- Packaged as a traditional WAR (in contrast to a Spring Boot executable jar)
- spring-webmvc or spring-webflux dependency
- Spring Framework versions 5.3.0 to 5.3.17, 5.2.0 to 5.2.19, and older versions
How does the “Spring4Shell” exploitation work?
The exploitation relies on using “Data Binding” (org.springframework.web.bind.WebDataBinder) in requests that make use of Plain Old Java Objects (POJO) in the method signature:
Where the Foo class is a POJO class, which could be defined as the following. Note that the actual class isn’t important, as long as it’s loaded by the Class Loader.
When a request is handled by a method like this, the Class Loader is used to resolve the class. The Class Loader is responsible for loading classes at runtime, without having to preload all possible types into memory first. It figures out which .jar file to load when a new class is used.
You can find the most up to date and in-depth information about this vulnerability directly from Spring on their blogpost, including potential fixes or workarounds.
Vulnerability 2 - Spring Cloud Function (CVE-2022-22963)
On March 27th 2022, Cyber Kendra disclosed details about a 0-day Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability in Spring Cloud Functions for which no patch existed. The vulnerability was assigned the ID CVE-2022-22963: Spring Expression Resource Access Vulnerability.
What applications are at risk?
The vulnerability affected applications under these conditions:
- JDK 9 or newer
- Spring Cloud Functions version 3.1.6 (or lower), 3.2.2 (or lower), or any unsupported version
How does the exploitation work?
Spring Cloud Function provides the capability for developers to configure how routing is handled through the property spring.cloud.function.routing-expression, usually done through configuration, or code. This is a powerful capability that accepts the “Spring Expression Language” (SpEL). Through this 0-day vulnerability, we have learned that this property could be set through the HTTP headers of a request, which meant that an attacker could embed SpEL code directly in their HTTP request to a RoutingFunction endpoint, and thus execute arbitrary code.
What steps should users take to mitigate risk?
Spring has released versions 3.1.7 and 3.2.3 to address this issue by not allowing this property to be set through HTTP headers, mitigating the vulnerability. After upgrading to either version, no additional steps are necessary.
Interested in learning more about how we help developers write more secure code? Book a demo or explore our free secure coding guidelines on secure code coach.
Sources
- https://www.lunasec.io/docs/blog/spring-rce-vulnerabilities/
- https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/2022/03/30/spring4shell-zero-day-vulnerability-in-spring-framework/
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Secure Code Warrior is here for your organization to help you secure code across the entire software development lifecycle and create a culture in which cybersecurity is top of mind. Whether you’re an AppSec Manager, Developer, CISO, or anyone involved in security, we can help your organization reduce risks associated with insecure code.
View reportBook a demo
Recently, Spring libraries, one of the most popular libraries in the Java community, disclosed 2 vulnerabilities related to Remote Code Execution (RCE). To help make it easier for you to understand if you are at risk for either vulnerability and what actions to take, we’ve broken down the known details for “Spring4Shell” and “Spring Cloud Function.”
Vulnerability 1 - “Spring4Shell” (CVE-2022-22965)
On March 29th, 2022, the community discovered a series of tweets containing screenshots of a proof of concept of an exploit targeting Spring Core (SC) , which allows for Remote Code Execution for all versions of Spring Core, including the most recently released version, 5.3.17.
What applications are at risk?
Currently, only applications being hosted on Tomcat are confirmed to be at risk to this new exploit. While the exploitation has not been demonstrated as successful against the Embedded Tomcat Servlet Container, or any other non-Tomcat hosted applications, that does not rule out the possibility of the threat proving successful in the future to these frameworks.
Spring released an official statement about the vulnerability, which clarifies that the following conditions need to be met to be vulnerable, according to the current understanding of the vulnerability:
- JDK 9 or higher
- Apache Tomcat as the Servlet container
- Packaged as a traditional WAR (in contrast to a Spring Boot executable jar)
- spring-webmvc or spring-webflux dependency
- Spring Framework versions 5.3.0 to 5.3.17, 5.2.0 to 5.2.19, and older versions
How does the “Spring4Shell” exploitation work?
The exploitation relies on using “Data Binding” (org.springframework.web.bind.WebDataBinder) in requests that make use of Plain Old Java Objects (POJO) in the method signature:
Where the Foo class is a POJO class, which could be defined as the following. Note that the actual class isn’t important, as long as it’s loaded by the Class Loader.
When a request is handled by a method like this, the Class Loader is used to resolve the class. The Class Loader is responsible for loading classes at runtime, without having to preload all possible types into memory first. It figures out which .jar file to load when a new class is used.
You can find the most up to date and in-depth information about this vulnerability directly from Spring on their blogpost, including potential fixes or workarounds.
Vulnerability 2 - Spring Cloud Function (CVE-2022-22963)
On March 27th 2022, Cyber Kendra disclosed details about a 0-day Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability in Spring Cloud Functions for which no patch existed. The vulnerability was assigned the ID CVE-2022-22963: Spring Expression Resource Access Vulnerability.
What applications are at risk?
The vulnerability affected applications under these conditions:
- JDK 9 or newer
- Spring Cloud Functions version 3.1.6 (or lower), 3.2.2 (or lower), or any unsupported version
How does the exploitation work?
Spring Cloud Function provides the capability for developers to configure how routing is handled through the property spring.cloud.function.routing-expression, usually done through configuration, or code. This is a powerful capability that accepts the “Spring Expression Language” (SpEL). Through this 0-day vulnerability, we have learned that this property could be set through the HTTP headers of a request, which meant that an attacker could embed SpEL code directly in their HTTP request to a RoutingFunction endpoint, and thus execute arbitrary code.
What steps should users take to mitigate risk?
Spring has released versions 3.1.7 and 3.2.3 to address this issue by not allowing this property to be set through HTTP headers, mitigating the vulnerability. After upgrading to either version, no additional steps are necessary.
Interested in learning more about how we help developers write more secure code? Book a demo or explore our free secure coding guidelines on secure code coach.
Sources
- https://www.lunasec.io/docs/blog/spring-rce-vulnerabilities/
- https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/2022/03/30/spring4shell-zero-day-vulnerability-in-spring-framework/
Table of contents
Secure Code Warrior is here for your organization to help you secure code across the entire software development lifecycle and create a culture in which cybersecurity is top of mind. Whether you’re an AppSec Manager, Developer, CISO, or anyone involved in security, we can help your organization reduce risks associated with insecure code.
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Secure by Design: Defining Best Practices, Enabling Developers and Benchmarking Preventative Security Outcomes
In this research paper, Secure Code Warrior co-founders, Pieter Danhieux and Dr. Matias Madou, Ph.D., along with expert contributors, Chris Inglis, Former US National Cyber Director (now Strategic Advisor to Paladin Capital Group), and Devin Lynch, Senior Director, Paladin Global Institute, will reveal key findings from over twenty in-depth interviews with enterprise security leaders including CISOs, a VP of Application Security, and software security professionals.
Benchmarking Security Skills: Streamlining Secure-by-Design in the Enterprise
Finding meaningful data on the success of Secure-by-Design initiatives is notoriously difficult. CISOs are often challenged when attempting to prove the return on investment (ROI) and business value of security program activities at both the people and company levels. Not to mention, it’s particularly difficult for enterprises to gain insights into how their organizations are benchmarked against current industry standards. The President’s National Cybersecurity Strategy challenged stakeholders to “embrace security and resilience by design.” The key to making Secure-by-Design initiatives work is not only giving developers the skills to ensure secure code, but also assuring the regulators that those skills are in place. In this presentation, we share a myriad of qualitative and quantitative data, derived from multiple primary sources, including internal data points collected from over 250,000 developers, data-driven customer insights, and public studies. Leveraging this aggregation of data points, we aim to communicate a vision of the current state of Secure-by-Design initiatives across multiple verticals. The report details why this space is currently underutilized, the significant impact a successful upskilling program can have on cybersecurity risk mitigation, and the potential to eliminate categories of vulnerabilities from a codebase.
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Revealed: How the Cyber Industry Defines Secure by Design
In our latest white paper, our Co-Founders, Pieter Danhieux and Dr. Matias Madou, Ph.D., sat down with over twenty enterprise security leaders, including CISOs, AppSec leaders and security professionals, to figure out the key pieces of this puzzle and uncover the reality behind the Secure by Design movement. It’s a shared ambition across the security teams, but no shared playbook.
Is Vibe Coding Going to Turn Your Codebase Into a Frat Party?
Vibe coding is like a college frat party, and AI is the centerpiece of all the festivities, the keg. It’s a lot of fun to let loose, get creative, and see where your imagination can take you, but after a few keg stands, drinking (or, using AI) in moderation is undoubtedly the safer long-term solution.
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