CVE-2019-11272: PlaintextPasswordEncoder authenticates encoded passwords that are null

LOW | JUNE 19, 2019 | CVE-2019-11272

Description

Spring Security, versions 4.2.x up to 4.2.12, and older unsupported versions support plain text passwords using PlaintextPasswordEncoder. If an application using an affected version of Spring Security is leveraging PlaintextPasswordEncoder and a user has a null encoded password, a malicious user (or attacker) can authenticate using a password of “null”.

Affected Spring Products and Versions

Spring Security 4.2 to 4.2.12
Older unsupported versions are also affected
Note that Spring Security 5+ is not impacted by this vulnerability.

Mitigation

Users of affected versions should apply the following mitigation:

4.2.x users should upgrade to 4.2.13
Older versions should upgrade to a supported branch

There are no other mitigation steps necessary.

Credit

This issue was identified and responsibly reported by Tim Büthe and Daniel Neagaru from mytaxi.

History

2019-06-19: Initial vulnerability report published

Reporting a vulnerability

The VMware Security Response team provides a single point of contact for the reporting of security vulnerabilities in VMware Tanzu products and coordinates the process of investigating any reported vulnerabilities.

To report a security vulnerability in a VMware service or product please refer to the VMware Security Response Policy.