Neo4j
CVE-2018-18389
CRITICAL
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A07:2025 - Authentication Failures
ASVS 5.0
V6 - Authentication Authentication mechanism validation
MITRE ATT&CK
2 techniques across 2 tactics: Defense Evasion, Initial Access The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Impact | CVSS score of 9.8 (CRITICAL). Attack characteristics: network attack vector, low complexity, no privileges required, no user interaction not required. Public proof-of-concept exploit code is available. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | A remote attacker could bypass authentication mechanisms to gain unauthorized access by sending crafted requests to the affected application. No authentication is required to exploit this vulnerability. |
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Alert meAnalysisAI
Due to incorrect access control in Neo4j Enterprise Database Server 3.4.x before 3.4.9, the setting of LDAP for authentication with STARTTLS, and System Account for authorization, allows an attacker. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.8), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. Public exploit code available and no vendor patch available.
RemediationAI
No vendor patch is available at time of analysis. Monitor vendor advisories for updates. Implement multi-factor authentication, enforce strong password policies, use proven authentication frameworks.
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in maven
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
This vulnerability is classified as Improper Authentication (CWE-287), which allows attackers to bypass authentication mechanisms to gain unauthorized access. Due to incorrect access control in Neo4j Enterprise Database Server 3.4.x before 3.4.9, the setting of LDAP for authentication with STARTTLS, and System Account for authorization, allows an attacker to log into the server by sending any valid username with an arbitrary password. Affected products include: Neo4J. Version information: before 3.4.9.
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- Exploit and PoC references, threat intelligence from 22 sources
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Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Primary rating from NVD · only source for this CVE.
CVSS VectorNVD
DescriptionNVD
Due to incorrect access control in Neo4j Enterprise Database Server 3.4.x before 3.4.9, the setting of LDAP for authentication with STARTTLS, and System Account for authorization, allows an attacker to log into the server by sending any valid username with an arbitrary password.
Threat Intelligence Overview
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
GitHub
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Authentication bypass attacks exploit flaws in the verification mechanisms that control access to systems and applications.
Affected Products (CPE)NVD
neo4j-contrib neo4j-apoc-procedures version before commit 45bc09c contains a XML External Entity (XXE) vulnerability in
Neo4j through 3.4.18 (with the shell server enabled) exposes an RMI service that arbitrarily deserializes Java objects,
APOC (Awesome Procedures on Cypher) is an add-on library for Neo4j. Rated high severity (CVSS 8.1), this vulnerability i
Neo4j APOC (Awesome Procedures on Cypher) before 4.3.0.7 and 4.x before 4.4.0.8 allows Directory Traversal to sibling di
Schema-level and Query/Mutation type-level @authentication directives are silently ignored for top-level @cypher fields
A failure in resetting the security context in some transaction actions in Neo4j Graph Database 4.2 and 4.3 could allow
Authorization bypass in @neo4j/graphql 7.0.0 through 7.6.3 lets an authenticated user read, create, and delete records t
JWT authentication bypass in @neo4j/graphql allows unauthenticated remote clients to forge arbitrary JWT claims over Gra
Authentication bypass in @neo4j/graphql exposes admin-restricted custom-resolver fields to any authenticated user holdin
Multiple cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities in Neo4J 1.9.2 allow remote attackers to hijack the authentic
The Cypher component in Neo4j 5.0.0 through 5.18 mishandles IMMUTABLE privileges in some situations where an attacker al
Bolt protocol handshake decoder in Neo4j Enterprise and Community Editions fails to distinguish overlong capability mask
Exploit-DB