Impact of Spring4Shell CVE-2022-22965 and CVE-2022-22963 on VMware Blockchain

Products

• VMware Blockchain

Issue/Introduction

The purpose of this KB article is to understand the impact of CVE-2022-22963 and CVE-2022-22965 on VMware Blockchain (VMBCO, Replica and Client nodes).

Symptoms:

What is the impact of  CVE-2022-22965 and CVE-2022-22963 on VMware Blockchain?

Environment

VMware Blockchain 1.3
VMware Blockchain 1.2
VMware Blockchain 1.4

Cause

1. CVE-2022-22963 is a vulnerability in the routing functionality of Spring Cloud Function that allows code injection through Spring Expression Language (SpEL) by adding a special spring.cloud.function.routing-expression header to an HTTP request. SpEL is a special expression language created for Spring Framework that supports queries and object graph management at runtime. This vulnerability can also be used for remote code execution.

​A vulnerable configuration consists of: Spring Cloud Function 3.1.6, 3.2.2 and older versions

 

2. CVE-2022-22965 (Spring4Shell, SpringShell) is a vulnerability in the Spring Framework that uses data binding functionality to bind data stored within an HTTP request to certain objects used by an application. The bug exists in the getCachedIntrospectionResults method, which can be used to gain unauthorized access to such objects by passing their class names via an HTTP request. It creates the risks of data leakage and remote code execution when special object classes are used. This vulnerability is similar to the long-closed CVE-2010-1622, where class name checks were added as a fix so that the name did not match classLoader or protectionDomain. However, in a newer version of JDK an alternative method exists for such exploitation, for example, through Java 9 Platform Module System functionality.

 

An attacker can overwrite the Tomcat logging configuration and then upload a JSP web shell to execute arbitrary commands on a server running a vulnerable version of the framework.

A vulnerable configuration consists of: 

• JDK version 9+
• Apache Tomcat for serving the application
• Spring Framework versions 5.3.0 to 5.3.17 and 5.2.0 to 5.2.19 and below
• application built as a WAR file

Resolution

1. CVE-2022-22963 :  VMware Blockchain does not use Spring Cloud Function, and this CVE has not shown up in any vulnerability scans. This CVE is not identified as a threat on VMBC.
2. CVE-2022-22965 :  A fix has been applied to VMBC 1.5, 1.6, and 1.7. For previous versions of VMBC, a security scan will show the vulnerability exists. However, this is not exploitable and hence can be safely ignored.