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Fencer Vulns
high 7.3

CVE-2019-11272 json

PlaintextPasswordEncoder authenticates encoded passwords that are null

published 2019-06-26 7 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-v33x-prhc-gph5 , EUVD-2019-0562

cvss
7.3
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.4%
EPSS 1.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 72%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Spring Security, versions 4.2.x up to 4.2.12, and older unsupported versions support plain text passwords using PlaintextPasswordEncoder. If an application using an affected version of Spring Security is leveraging PlaintextPasswordEncoder and a user has a null encoded password, a malicious user (or attacker) can authenticate using a password of "null".

Patch / fix

  • maven org.springframework.security:spring-security-core 4.2.13
  • maven org.springframework.security:spring-security-cas 4.2.13.RELEASE
  • Spring Spring Security 4.2.13.RELEASE

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2019-11272 updated cvss 5.0

spring-security-core: mishandling of user passwords allows logging in with a password of NULL

  • Red Hat JBoss Fuse 6 spring-security-core
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8 (Liberty) opendaylight Red Hat OpenStack Platform 9 (Mitaka) opendaylight
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Fuse 7.6.0
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2020:0983
  • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 (Newton) opendaylight Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13 (Queens) opendaylight Red Hat OpenStack Platform 14 (Rocky) opendaylight
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

1.38% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 72% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 7.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L
NVD 2.0 7.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
GitHub 3.1 7.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.springframework.security:spring-security-core
<4.2.13
4.2.13
maven org.springframework.security:spring-security-cas
<4.2.13.RELEASE
4.2.13.RELEASE

Affected products

  • Spring Spring Security

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-287 Improper Authentication
  • CWE-522 Insufficiently Protected Credentials
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.