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Fencer Vulns
medium 4.8

CVE-2025-68161 json

Apache Log4j Core: Missing TLS hostname verification in Socket appender

published 2025-12-18 10 mo ago modified 2026-09-10 59 d ago also GHSA-vc5p-v9hr-52mj , EUVD-2025-204312

cvss
4.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.8%
EPSS 0.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 55%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The Socket Appender in Apache Log4j Core versions 2.0-beta9 through 2.25.2 does not perform TLS hostname verification of the peer certificate, even when the verifyHostName https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/manual/appenders/network.html#SslConfiguration-attr-verifyHostName configuration attribute or the log4j2.sslVerifyHostName https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/manual/systemproperties.html#log4j2.sslVerifyHostName system property is set to true.

This issue may allow a man-in-the-middle attacker to intercept or redirect log traffic under the following conditions:

* The attacker is able to intercept or redirect network traffic between the client and the log receiver. * The attacker can present a server certificate issued by a certification authority trusted by the Socket Appender’s configured trust store (or by the default Java trust store if no custom trust store is configured).

Users are advised to upgrade to Apache Log4j Core version 2.25.3, which addresses this issue.

As an alternative mitigation, the Socket Appender may be configured to use a private or restricted trust root to limit the set of trusted certificates.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.apache.logging.log4j:log4j-core 2.25.3
  • Apache Software Foundation Apache Log4j Core 2.25.3
  • log4j SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7, openSUSE Leap 15.6 2.20.0-150200.4.30.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:0254-1

  • coredns openSUSE Leap 16.0 1.14.0-bp160.1.1
  • log4j openSUSE Tumbleweed 2.20.0-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:20099-1openSUSE-SU-2026:10009-1

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-2025-68161 updated cvss 5.9

Apache Log4j: Apache Log4j Core: Information disclosure via missing TLS hostname verification

  • Red Hat Logging Subsystem for Red Hat OpenShift log4j-core, openshift-logging/kibana6-rhel8, openshift-logging/elasticsearch6-rhel9, openshift-logging/logging-curator5-rhel9, openshift-logging/elasticsearch-proxy-rhel9, openshift-logging/elasticsearch-rhel9-operator, +1 more Red Hat AI Inference Server rhaiis/vllm-cuda-rhel9, rhaiis-preview/vllm-cuda-rhel9 Red Hat AMQ Broker 7 log4j-core Red Hat AMQ Clients log4j-core Red Hat build of Apache Camel - HawtIO 4 log4j-core Red Hat build of Apache Camel for Spring Boot 4 log4j-core
    +22 more products
    Red Hat build of Apicurio Registry 2 log4j-core Red Hat build of Apicurio Registry 3 log4j-core Red Hat build of OptaPlanner 8 log4j-core Red Hat Ceph Storage 6 ceph, cephadm, librbd1, librgw2, rbd-nbd, ceph-mib, +16 more Red Hat Ceph Storage 7 ceph, cephadm, librbd1, librgw2, rbd-nbd, ceph-mib, +16 more Red Hat Ceph Storage 8 ceph, cephadm, librbd1, librgw2, rbd-nbd, ceph-mib, +17 more Red Hat Data Grid 8 log4j-core, log4j-core-test Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 log4j, log4j-manual, log4j-javadoc Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 log4j, log4j-manual, log4j-javadoc Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 log4j, log4j12, resteasy, log4j-jcl, log4j-web, log4j-slf4j, +2 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 log4j, resteasy, log4j-jcl, log4j-slf4j, pki-resteasy-core, pki-resteasy-client, +2 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 log4j Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI (RHEL AI) 3 rhelai3/bootc-cuda-rhel9, rhelai3/bootc-aws-cuda-rhel9, rhelai3/bootc-gcp-cuda-rhel9, rhelai3/bootc-azure-cuda-rhel9 Red Hat Fuse 7 log4j-core Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7 log4j-core, log4j-core-test Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 8 log4j-core, log4j-core-test Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Expansion Pack log4j-core, log4j-core-test Red Hat JBoss Web Server 6 log4j-core Red Hat Offline Knowledge Portal offline-knowledge-portal/rhokp-rhel9 Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) rhoai/odh-modelmesh-rhel8, rhoai/odh-modelmesh-rhel9, rhoai/odh-vllm-cuda-rhel9, rhoai/odh-vllm-gaudi-rhel9, rhoai/odh-pipeline-runtime-pytorch-cuda-py312-rhel9, rhoai/odh-pipeline-runtime-pytorch-rocm-py312-rhel9, +9 more Red Hat streams for Apache Kafka 2 log4j-core Red Hat streams for Apache Kafka 3 log4j-core
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”

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

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
10 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.77% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 55% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • logging.apache.org https://logging.apache.org/security.html#CVE-2025-68161 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 6.3 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N
CNA 4.0 6.3 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
NVD 3.1 4.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.apache.logging.log4j:log4j-core
>=2.0-beta9, <2.25.3
2.25.3

Affected products

  • Apache Software Foundation Apache Log4j Core

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-297 Improper Validation of Certificate with Host Mismatch
  • CWE-295 Improper Certificate Validation
Technology feeds

References

Sources

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