Spring Boot Configuration Security Issues

Spring Boot's Cassandra auto-configuration fails to verify hostnames during SSL/TLS connection establishment to Cassandra servers, enabling man-in-the-middle attackers on the local network to intercept credentials and data by presenting a valid certificate for any domain. Affects Spring Boot 2.7.0-4.0.5; vendor-released patches available for all supported versions (4.0.6, 3.5.14, 3.4.16, 3.3.19, 2.7.33). No public exploit code identified at time of analysis.

Authentication bypass in Spring Boot 4.0.0-4.0.5 allows remote unauthenticated attackers to access all application endpoints, bypassing default web security filters entirely. Affects servlet-based applications using spring-boot-actuator-autoconfigure without custom Spring Security configuration and without spring-boot-health dependency. Vendor patch released (upgrade to 4.0.6+). No public exploit code identified at time of analysis, but CVSS 9.1 with network attack vector (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N) indicates trivial exploitation once configuration prerequisites are met.

Predictable secret generation in Spring Boot's random value property source allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to obtain potentially sensitive values. Affected versions include Spring Boot 4.0.0 to 4.0.5, 3.5.x, 3.4.x, 3.3.x, and 2.7.x before the respective patch releases. The vulnerability has a CVSS score of 7.5 (High) but no active exploitation has been confirmed, and EPSS suggests a very low likelihood of exploitation.

Local privilege escalation and session hijacking in Spring Boot allows attackers with local access to hijack authenticated sessions or execute arbitrary code by taking control of the ApplicationTemp directory. The vulnerability affects Spring Boot versions 2.7.0 through 4.0.5 when server.servlet.session.persistent is enabled, requiring attack persistence across application restarts. VMware has released patches for all supported branches (4.0.6, 3.5.14, 3.4.16, 3.3.19, 2.7.33), though unsupported versions remain vulnerable. No active exploitation confirmed at time of analysis.

Spring Boot applications configured with ApplicationPidFileWriter are vulnerable to local file corruption when a high-privilege user can write to the PID file directory. An attacker with high privileges and write access to the PID file location can corrupt arbitrary files each time the application restarts, achieving denial of service or data integrity violations. Exploitation requires local access and elevated privileges, limiting real-world impact to co-resident or insider threat scenarios. No active exploitation has been publicly reported.