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Exploited in the wild · Spring Framework · CVSS 9.8 · published 1 April 2022

Spring4Shell: CVE-2022-22965

A data binding flaw in Spring MVC and WebFlux that can let a remote attacker run code on applications that run on JDK 9 or later and are deployed as a WAR on Tomcat. Below is its status on each Linux distribution past end of life, from the vendors' own security trackers.

  • 2end-of-life systems without a free fix
  • 7fixed or not affected

Spring4Shell on end-of-life Linux

DistributionStatusDetails
CentOS 6Not packagedthe distribution does not ship it
CentOS 7Not packagedthe distribution does not ship it
RHEL 7Not packagedthe distribution does not ship it
CentOS 8Not packagedthe distribution does not ship it
Ubuntu 16.04Not affectedonly builds using jdk 9+ are affected
Ubuntu 18.04Fixed only in Ubuntu Pro4.3.22-1~18.04.1~esm1
Ubuntu 20.04Fixed only in Ubuntu Pro4.3.22-4ubuntu0.1~esm1
Debian 10Not packagedthe distribution does not ship it
Debian 11Not packagedthe distribution does not ship it

From the Red Hat security data (CentOS and RHEL), the Ubuntu CVE tracker and the Debian security tracker, 29 October 2026. CentOS received Red Hat's fixes only until its own end of life; later fixes went to paid Red Hat support. Fixes marked Ubuntu Pro need a paid subscription. Where a tracker has no entry, the version in the distribution's repository is checked against the NVD range.

The Spring Framework versions we track

VersionCVE-2022-22965
Spring Framework 4.3.30Affected
Spring Framework 5.2.25Not affected
Spring Framework 5.3.39Not affected

For the upstream version, according to the US National Vulnerability Database. A distribution package may carry its own fix; the table above shows that.

What the NVD record says

A Spring MVC or Spring WebFlux application running on JDK 9+ may be vulnerable to remote code execution (RCE) via data binding. The specific exploit requires the application to run on Tomcat as a WAR deployment. If the application is deployed as a Spring Boot executable jar, i.e. the default, it is not vulnerable to the exploit. However, the nature of the vulnerability is more general, and there may be other ways to exploit it.

Score 9.8 (Critical), published 1 April 2022. Listed in the CISA catalogue of known exploited vulnerabilities on 4 April 2022. Read the NVD entry

Affected upstream versions of Spring Framework

  • spring framework before 5.2.20
  • spring framework from 5.3.0 before 5.3.18

What you can do

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