Spring Security Advisories

CVE-2016-9878 Directory Traversal in the Spring Framework ResourceServlet

LOW | DECEMBER 21, 2016 | CVE-2016-9878

Description

Paths provided to the ResourceServlet were not properly sanitized and as a result exposed to directory traversal attacks.

Affected Spring Products and Versions

  • Spring Framework 4.3.0 to 4.3.4
  • Spring Framework 4.2.0 to 4.2.8
  • Spring Framework 3.2.0 to 3.2.17
  • Older unsupported versions are also affected

Mitigation

Users of affected versions should apply the following mitigation:

  • 4.3.x users should upgrade to 4.3.5
  • 4.2.x users should upgrade to 4.2.9
  • 3.2.x users should upgrade to 3.2.18

Note that few applications are likely to use the ResourceServlet. It has been generally superseded since version 3.0 (circa 2009) by the ResourceHttpRequestHandler and related classes that have been in use by default and provide much more advanced capabilities, see “Serving Resources” in the reference documentation. The ResourceServlet is now deprecated in 3.2.x and 4.x and is removed altogether starting with version 5.

Credit

The issue was identified by Shumpei Asahara & Yuji Ito from NTT DATA Corporation and responsibly reported to Pivotal.

History

  • 2016-12-21: Initial vulnerability report published

Get ahead

VMware offers training and certification to turbo-charge your progress.

Learn more

Get support

Spring Runtime offers support and binaries for OpenJDK™, Spring, and Apache Tomcat® in one simple subscription.

Learn more

Upcoming events

Check out all the upcoming events in the Spring community.

View all

© 2023 VMware, Inc. or its affiliates. Terms of Use PrivacyTrademark Guidelines Your California Privacy Rights Cookie Settings

Apache®, Apache Tomcat®, Apache Kafka®, Apache Cassandra™, and Apache Geode™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries. Java™, Java™ SE, Java™ EE, and OpenJDK™ are trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Kubernetes® is a registered trademark of the Linux Foundation in the United States and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States and other countries. Windows® and Microsoft® Azure are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. “AWS” and “Amazon Web Services” are trademarks or registered trademarks of Amazon.com Inc. or its affiliates. All other trademarks and copyrights are property of their respective owners and are only mentioned for informative purposes. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.