GHSA-8cmm-qj8g-fcp6 CVE-2014-0054

Cross-Site Request Forgery in Spring Framework

Medium Maven

Severity: Medium; The publisher's own rating, not a CVSS score
Exploit chance (EPSS): 91.35%; Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 99.81% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited: No; Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness: CWE-352 Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Fix: 3.2.8; Upgrade org.springframework:spring-webmvc to this version or later

Description

The Jaxb2RootElementHttpMessageConverter in Spring MVC in Spring Framework before 3.2.8 and 4.0.0 before 4.0.2 does not disable external entity resolution, which allows remote attackers to read arbitrary files, cause a denial of service, and conduct CSRF attacks via crafted XML, aka an XML External Entity (XXE) issue. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2013-4152, CVE-2013-7315, and CVE-2013-6429.

Affected versions

Maven

Package	Vulnerable	Fixed in
org.springframework:spring-webmvc	`< 3.2.8`	`3.2.8`
org.springframework:spring-webmvc	`>= 4.0.0, < 4.0.2`	`4.0.2`

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

org.springframework:spring-webmvc Maven → `3.2.8`

maven

<dependency><groupId>org.springframework</groupId><artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId><version>3.2.8</version></dependency>

gradle

implementation("org.springframework:spring-webmvc:3.2.8")

Weakness

CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

The web application does not, or cannot, sufficiently verify whether a request was intentionally provided by the user who sent the request, which could have originated from an unauthorized actor.

How to prevent it

Architecture and Design: Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid [REF-1482]. For example, use anti-CSRF packages such as the OWASP CSRFGuard. [REF-330] Another example is the ESAPI Session Management control, which includes a component for CSRF. [REF-45]
Implementation: Ensure that the application is free of cross-site scripting issues (CWE-79), because most CSRF defenses can be bypassed using attacker-controlled script.
Architecture and Design: Generate a unique nonce for each form, place the nonce into the form, and verify the nonce upon receipt of the form. Be sure that the nonce is not predictable (CWE-330). [REF-332]
Architecture and Design: Identify especially dangerous operations. When the user performs a dangerous operation, send a separate confirmation request to ensure that the user intended to perform that operation.
Architecture and Design: Use the "double-submitted cookie" method as described by Felten and Zeller: When a user visits a site, the site should generate a pseudorandom value and set it as a cookie on the user's machine. The site should require every form submission to include this value as a form value and also as a cookie value. When a POST request is sent to the site, the request should only be considered valid if the form value and the cookie value are the same. Because of the same-origin policy, an attacker cannot read or modify the value stored in the cookie. To successfully submit a form on behalf of the user, the attacker would have to correctly guess the pseudorandom value. If the pseudorandom value is cryptographically strong, this will be prohibitively difficult. This technique requires Javascript, so it may not work for browsers that have Javascript disabled. [REF-331]
Architecture and Design: Do not use the GET method for any request that triggers a state change.
Implementation: Check the HTTP Referer header to see if the request originated from an expected page. This could break legitimate functionality, because users or proxies may have disabled sending the Referer for privacy reasons.

References

Advisories

nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2014-0054

Timeline

May 13, 2022 Published
Dec 4, 2024 Last updated by the source
Oct 31, 2026 Latest EPSS score

Advisory	Severity	Why it's related
GHSA-36p3-wjmg-h94x Remote Code Execution in Spring Framework	Critical Known exploited	Also affects org.springframework:spring-webmvc
GHSA-j9f9-w8pj-32f8 Spring Framework Server Sent Event stream corruption while rendering fragments	Critical	Also affects org.springframework:spring-webmvc
GHSA-pc63-qcmh-9cmg Spring Framework Improper Path Limitation in XsltView	Critical	Also affects org.springframework:spring-webmvc
GHSA-cjpg-rgq5-fr37 Spring Framework Multipart Request Smuggling in Spring MVC and WebFlux	Medium	Also affects org.springframework:spring-webmvc
GHSA-957g-f97v-vppc Spring Framework Cross-site Scripting via JSP Form Tags	Medium	Also affects org.springframework:spring-webmvc
GHSA-3chg-m5w7-qfv5 Spring Framework Cross-site Scripting via JavaScriptUtils	Medium	Also affects org.springframework:spring-webmvc
GHSA-h3qp-gqrc-q736 Spring Framework Open Redirect in Spring MVC and WebFlux	Medium	Also affects org.springframework:spring-webmvc
GHSA-72pg-x5f8-j25j Spring Framework Path Traversal via Versioned Static Resources in Spring MVC and WebFlux	Medium	Also affects org.springframework:spring-webmvc

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