Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability in geoserver
Multiple OGC request parameters allow Remote Code Execution (RCE) by unauthenticated users through specially crafted input against a default GeoServer installation due to unsafely evaluating property names as XPath expressions.
The GeoTools library API that GeoServer calls evaluates property/attribute names for feature types in a way that unsafely passes them to the commons-jxpath library which can execute arbitrary code when evaluating XPath expressions. This XPath evaluation is intended to be used only by complex feature types (i.e., Application Schema data stores) but is incorrectly being applied to simple feature types as well which makes this vulnerability apply to ALL GeoServer instances.
No public PoC is provided but this vulnerability has been confirmed to be exploitable through WFS GetFeature, WFS GetPropertyValue, WMS GetMap, WMS GetFeatureInfo, WMS GetLegendGraphic and WPS Execute requests.
This vulnerability can lead to executing arbitrary code.
A workaround exists by removing the gt-complex-x.y.jar file from the GeoServer where x.y is the GeoTools version (e.g., gt-complex-31.1.jar if running GeoServer 2.25.1). This will remove the vulnerable code from GeoServer but may break some GeoServer functionality or prevent GeoServer from deploying if the gt-complex module is needed by an extension you are using:
Mitigation for geoserver.war deploy:
geoserver.war into a directoryWEB-INF/lib/gt-complex-x.y.jar and removegeoserver.warMitigation for GeoServer binary:
webapps/geoserver/WEB-INF/lib/gt-complex-x.y.jar and removeThe following extensions and community modules are known to have a direct dependency on gt-complex jar and are not expected function properly without it. This is not comprehensive list and additional GeoServer functionality may be dependent on the availability of gt-complex jar:
Mitigation available for prior releases patching three jars in your existing install:
Patched gt-app-schema, gt-complex and gt-xsd-core jars may be downloaded for GeoServer: 2.25.1, 2.24.3, 2.24.2, 2.23.2, 2.22.2, 2.21.5, 2.21.4,2.20.7, 2.20.4, 2.19.2, 2.18.0.
As example the 2.25.1 page links to geoserver-2.25.1-patches.zip download on source forge.
Unzip the geoserver-x.y.z-patches.zip which contains three jars that have been patched to configure commons-jxpath with an empty function list prior to use. These files are drop-in replacements with identical file names to those they are replacing.
Follow the instructions above to locate WEB-INF/lib folder and replace the existing gt-app-schema, gt-complex and gt-xsd-core jars with those supplied by the patch.
https://github.com/geotools/geotools/security/advisories/GHSA-w3pj-wh35-fq8w https://osgeo-org.atlassian.net/browse/GEOT-7587 https://github.com/geotools/geotools/pull/4797 https://github.com/Warxim/CVE-2022-41852?tab=readme-ov-file#workaround-for-cve-2022-41852
Required Action
Apply mitigations per vendor instructions or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable.
This CVE is referenced in a KISA security bulletin (Korean only).
Why this VPI (explainable, experimental)
VPI breakdown
| Impact | 98.00 |
| Exploitation signal(KEV listed) | ×1.50 |
| VPI | 100.00 |
VPI formula vpi-v1