Apache Tomcat vulnerable to Unprotected Transport of Credentials

Description

When using the RemoteIpFilter with requests received from a reverse proxy via HTTP that include the X-Forwarded-Proto header set to https, session cookies created by Apache Tomcat 11.0.0-M1 to 11.0.0.-M2, 10.1.0-M1 to 10.1.5, 9.0.0-M1 to 9.0.71 and 8.5.0 to 8.5.85 did not include the secure attribute. This could result in the user agent transmitting the session cookie over an insecure channel.

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
medium
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2023-03-22 12:30:16 UTC
Updated
2025-11-04 21:31:36 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2023-03-22 21:22:52 UTC
NVD published
2023-03-22

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.10% 27.93%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
4.3 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:L)
Some sensitive info could get out, but not a total data dump.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-523 Unprotected Transport of Credentials

Affected packages (4)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
maven org.apache.tomcat:tomcat-catalina >= 11.0.0-M1, < 11.0.0-M3 11.0.0-M3
maven org.apache.tomcat:tomcat-catalina >= 10.1.0-M1, < 10.1.6 10.1.6
maven org.apache.tomcat:tomcat-catalina >= 9.0.0-M1, < 9.0.72 9.0.72
maven org.apache.tomcat:tomcat-catalina >= 8.5.0, < 8.5.86 8.5.86

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence