Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
high 8.8

CVE-2021-22112 json

Privilege escalation in spring security

published 2021-02-23 5 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-gq28-h5vg-8prx , EUVD-2021-1083

cvss
8.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
3.3%
EPSS 3.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 88%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Spring Security 5.4.x prior to 5.4.4, 5.3.x prior to 5.3.8.RELEASE, 5.2.x prior to 5.2.9.RELEASE, and older unsupported versions can fail to save the SecurityContext if it is changed more than once in a single request.A malicious user cannot cause the bug to happen (it must be programmed in). However, if the application's intent is to only allow the user to run with elevated privileges in a small portion of the application, the bug can be leveraged to extend those privileges to the rest of the application.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.springframework.security:spring-security-bom 5.2.9, 5.3.8, 5.4.4
  • maven org.springframework.security:spring-security-web 5.2.9, 5.3.8, 5.4.4
  • pivotal_software spring_security 5.2.9, 5.3.8
  • vmware spring_security 5.4.4
  • jenkins Arch Linux 2.280-1

arch linux advisories AVG-1595

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-2021-22112 updated cvss 8.8

jenkins: Privilege escalation vulnerability in bundled Spring Security library

  • Red Hat Fuse 7 jenkins Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.11 jenkins Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 jenkins
    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

3.29% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 88% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 9.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:C
GitHub 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.springframework.security:spring-security-bom
>=5.4.0, <5.4.4
>=5.3.0, <5.3.8
<5.2.9
5.4.4
5.3.8
5.2.9
maven org.springframework.security:spring-security-web
>=5.4.0, <5.4.4
>=5.3.0, <5.3.8
<5.2.9
5.4.4
5.3.8
5.2.9

Affected products

  • n/a Spring Security

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management
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.