apache tomcat CVE-2020-1938 vulnerability in Apache and Other Products
Published on February 24, 2020

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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.

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Known Exploited Vulnerability

This Apache Tomcat Improper Privilege Management Vulnerability is part of CISA's list of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities. Apache Tomcat treats Apache JServ Protocol (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.

The following remediation steps are recommended / required by March 17, 2022: Apply updates per vendor instructions.

Vulnerability Analysis

CVE-2020-1938 is exploitable with network access, and does not require authorization privileges or user interaction. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. This vulnerability is known to be actively exploited by threat actors in an automatable fashion. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to be critical as this vulnerability has a high impact to the confidentiality, integrity and availability of this component.

Attack Vector:
NETWORK
Attack Complexity:
LOW
Privileges Required:
NONE
User Interaction:
NONE
Scope:
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact:
HIGH
Integrity Impact:
HIGH
Availability Impact:
HIGH

Products Associated with CVE-2020-1938

You can be notified by email with stack.watch whenever vulnerabilities like CVE-2020-1938 are published in these products:

Apache Tomcat
 
Apache Geode
 
Fedora Project Fedora
 
Oracle Agile Engineering Data Management
 
Oracle Agile Plm
 
Oracle Communications Element Manager
 
Oracle Communications Instant Messaging Server
 
Oracle Health Sciences Empirica Inspections
 
Oracle Health Sciences Empirica Signal
 
Oracle Hospitality Guest Access
 
Oracle Instantis Enterprisetrack
 
Oracle Mysql Enterprise Monitor
 
Oracle Siebel Ui Framework
 
Oracle Transportation Management
 
Oracle Workload Manager
 
Debian Linux
 
OpenSuse Leap
 
Blackberry Good Control
 
Blackberry Workspaces Server
 
NetApp Oncommand System Manager
 
NetApp Data Availability Services
 
Oracle
 

Affected Versions

Apache Tomcat:

Exploit Probability

EPSS
94.47%
Percentile
100.00%

EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) scores estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The percentile shows you how this score compares to all other vulnerabilities.