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Fencer Vulns
critical 9.8

CVE-2017-12611 in the critical feed json

Apache Struts 2.0.1 uses an unintentional expression in a Freemarker tag instead of string literal

published 2017-09-20 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-8fx9-5hx8-crhm , EUVD-2018-0550

cvss
9.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
87.1%
EPSS 87.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 99.7%
public exploits
1
Exploit-DB, plus a Nuclei check

Summary

In Apache Struts 2.0.0 through 2.3.33 and 2.5 through 2.5.10.1, using an unintentional expression in a Freemarker tag instead of string literals can lead to a RCE attack.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.apache.struts:struts2-core 2.3.34, 2.5.11

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-2017-12611 updated cvss 8.1

struts: RCE attack when using an unintentional expression in Freemarker tag instead of string literals

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 struts Red Hat JBoss Data Virtualization 6 struts struts Red Hat JBoss Fuse Service Works 6 struts struts Red Hat JBoss Operations Network 3 struts struts Red Hat Satellite 5 struts
    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

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (EDB-44556)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

87.12% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 99.7% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-44556 Apache Struts 2.0.1 < 2.3.33 / 2.5 < 2.5.10 - Arbitrary Code Execution remote, 2017-09-08
  • Nuclei template Apache Struts2 S2-053 - Remote Code Execution nuclei detection template
  • struts.apache.org https://struts.apache.org/docs/s2-053.html referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 9.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
GitHub 3.0 9.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.apache.struts:struts2-core
>=2.0.1, <2.3.34
>=2.5.0, <2.5.11
2.3.34
2.5.11

Affected products

  • Apache Software Foundation Apache Struts

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

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.