Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

After the Spring cloud vulnerability reported yesterday, a new vulnerability called Spring4shell CVE-2022-22965 was reported this time on the very popular Java framework Spring Core on JDK9+. The vulnerability is always a remote code execution (RCE) which would permit attackers to execute arbitrary code on the machine and compromise the entire host.

Details of a zero-day vulnerability in Spring Framework were leaked on March 29, 2022 but promptly taken down by the original source. Although much of the initial speculation about the nature of the vulnerability was incorrect, we now know that the vulnerability has the potential to be quite serious depending on your organization’s use of Spring Framework. There is also a dedicated CVE 2022-22965 assigned to this vulnerability. We will keep this blog updated as new information comes up.

On March 29th, the cyberkendra security blog posted a sensational post about a Log4Shell-equivalent zero-day vulnerability in Spring Framework, but without any solid details about the vulnerability itself.

On March 30, 2022, a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability was found in the Spring Framework. More specifically, it is part of the spring-beans package, a transitive dependency in both spring-webmvc and spring-webflux. This vulnerability is another example of why securing the software supply chain is important to open source.

An RCE vulnerability affecting Spring Core’s JDK 9 and later has become a trending topic in cybersecurity networks during the past couple days. This discovery, compared by some to the Log4Shell vulnerability, generated a lot of confusion and even got mistook with a different vulnerability affecting Spring Cloud, which got a CVE assigned the same day, and even linked them to completely unrelated commits on Spring Core’s GitHub.

A new vulnerability was found in the Spring Core module of the Spring Framework. This was discovered by a Chinese security researcher, posting a Proof-of-Concept (POC) on GitHub (Figure 1), which later was deleted. This vulnerability is a zero-day, which currently wasn’t assigned a CVE, and was dubbed by security researchers as “Spring4Shell” or “SpringShell”, after the recent vulnerability in the Log4j Java package, discovered last December, and made waves worldwide.

As developers, we all have our morning startup routine: make coffee, check Slack/Discord/email, read the latest news. One thing I do as part of my daily startup routine is check the Snyk Vulnerability Database for the latest open source vulnerabilities. It’s been especially interesting to see the types of exploits and vulnerabilities that appear in different ecosystems.