Insecure Deserialization in Apache Commons Beanutils

Description

In Apache Commons Beanutils 1.9.2, a special BeanIntrospector class was added which allows suppressing the ability for an attacker to access the classloader via the class property available on all Java objects. We, however were not using this by default characteristic of the PropertyUtilsBean.

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
high
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2020-06-15 20:36:17 UTC
Updated
2023-01-27 05:02:43 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2020-06-11 15:08:49 UTC
NVD published
2019-08-20

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
1.24% 78.96%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
7.3 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L 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:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
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:L)
Attackers could change some data, but it’s limited—not everything goes.
Availability (A:L)
Might cause slowdowns, glitches, or partial disruption—not a full brick.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-502 Deserialization of Untrusted Data

Affected packages (1)

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

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
maven commons-beanutils:commons-beanutils < 1.9.4 1.9.4

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence