Skip to content
fr Sign in
9.8 Critical Exploited

CVE-2020-1938 Apache Tomcat Improper Privilege Management Vulnerability

Active exploitation observed

· CISA KEV catalogue
Required action Apply updates per vendor instructions.
Ransomware campaigns Not observed so far

Description

When using the Apache JServ Protocol (AJP), care must be taken when trusting incoming connections to Apache Tomcat. Tomcat treats AJP connections as having higher trust than, for example, a similar HTTP connection. If such connections are available to an attacker, they can be exploited in ways that may be surprising. In Apache Tomcat 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.0.30, 8.5.0 to 8.5.50 and 7.0.0 to 7.0.99, Tomcat shipped with an AJP Connector enabled by default that listened on all configured IP addresses. It was expected (and recommended in the security guide) that this Connector would be disabled if not required. This vulnerability report identified a mechanism that allowed: - returning arbitrary files from anywhere in the web application - processing any file in the web application as a JSP Further, if the web application allowed file upload and stored those files within the web application (or the attacker was able to control the content of the web application by some other means) then this, along with the ability to process a file as a JSP, made remote code execution possible. It is important to note that mitigation is only required if an AJP port is accessible to untrusted users. Users wishing to take a defence-in-depth approach and block the vector that permits returning arbitrary files and execution as JSP may upgrade to Apache Tomcat 9.0.31, 8.5.51 or 7.0.100 or later. A number of changes were made to the default AJP Connector configuration in 9.0.31 to harden the default configuration. It is likely that users upgrading to 9.0.31, 8.5.51 or 7.0.100 or later will need to make small changes to their configurations.

Affected products and versions

Product Affected versions Fixed in
Apache Tomcat Versions not published

References

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. Added to the KEV catalogue
  3. Last modified

Other CVEs of Apache Tomcat

The 5 CVEs of Apache Tomcat →
CVE-2020-11996 A specially crafted sequence of HTTP/2 requests sent to Apache Tomcat 10.0.0-M1 to 10.0.0-M5, 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.35 and… Not rated CVE-2020-1935 In Apache Tomcat 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.30, 8.5.0 to 8.5.50 and 7.0.0 to 7.0.99 the HTTP header parsing code used an approach… Not rated CVE-2019-17569 The refactoring present in Apache Tomcat 9.0.28 to 9.0.30, 8.5.48 to 8.5.50 and 7.0.98 to 7.0.99 introduced a regression Not rated CVE-2019-0221 The SSI printenv command in Apache Tomcat 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.0.17, 8.5.0 to 8.5.39 and 7.0.0 to 7.0.93 echoes user provided… Not rated
Track this CVE