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.

When processing user provided XML documents, the Spring Framework 4.0.0 to 4.0.4, 3.0.0 to 3.2.8, and possibly earlier unsupported versions did not disable by default the resolution of URI references in a DTD declaration. This enabled an XXE attack.

Both Spring Security 3.2.x, 4.0.x, 4.1.0 and the Spring Framework 3.2.x, 4.0.x, 4.1.x, 4.2.x rely on URL pattern mappings for authorization and for mapping requests to controllers respectively. Differences in the strictness of the pattern matching mechanisms, for example with regards to space trimming in path segments, can lead Spring Security to not recognize certain paths as not protected that are in fact mapped to Spring MVC controllers that should be protected. The problem is compounded by the fact that the Spring Framework provides richer features with regards to pattern matching as well as by the fact that pattern matching in each Spring Security and the Spring Framework can easily be customized creating additional differences.

Under some situations, the Spring Framework 4.2.0 to 4.2.1, 4.0.0 to 4.1.7, 3.2.0 to 3.2.14 and older unsupported versions is vulnerable to a Reflected File Download (RFD) attack. The attack involves a malicious user crafting a URL with a batch script extension that results in the response being downloaded rather than rendered and also includes some input reflected in the response.

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.

The SourceHttpMessageConverter in Spring MVC in Spring Framework before 3.2.5 and 4.0.0.M1 through 4.0.0.RC1 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, and a different vulnerability than CVE-2013-4152 and CVE-2013-7315.

The Spring OXM wrapper in Spring Framework before 3.2.4 and 4.0.0.M1, when using the JAXB marshaller, does not disable entity resolution, which allows context-dependent attackers to read arbitrary files, cause a denial of service, and conduct CSRF attacks via an XML external entity declaration in conjunction with an entity reference in a (1) DOMSource, (2) StAXSource, (3) SAXSource, or (4) StreamSource, aka an XML External Entity (XXE) issue.

The Spring MVC in Spring Framework before 3.2.4 and 4.0.0.M1 through 4.0.0.M2 does not disable external entity resolution for the StAX XMLInputFactory, which allows context-dependent attackers to read arbitrary files, cause a denial of service, and conduct CSRF attacks via crafted XML with JAXB, aka an XML External Entity (XXE) issue, and a different vulnerability than CVE-2013-4152. NOTE: this issue was SPLIT from CVE-2013-4152 due to different affected versions.