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Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2013-2185 json

Deserialization of Untrusted Data in Apache Tomcat

published 2014-01-19 12 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also GHSA-v6c7-8qx5-8gmp , EUVD-2022-5293

cvss
7.5
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
7.2%
EPSS 7.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 94%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The readObject method in the DiskFileItem class in Apache Tomcat and JBoss Web, as used in Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6.1.0 and Red Hat JBoss Portal 6.0.0, allows remote attackers to write to arbitrary files via a NULL byte in a file name in a serialized instance, a similar issue to CVE-2013-2186. NOTE: this issue is reportedly disputed by the Apache Tomcat team, although Red Hat considers it a vulnerability. The dispute appears to regard whether it is the responsibility of applications to avoid providing untrusted data to be deserialized, or whether this class should inherently protect against this issue

Patch / fix

  • maven org.apache.tomcat:tomcat 7.0.39
  • jbossweb jboss enterprise application platform 6 7.2.0-3.redhat_2.ep6.el5
  • jbossweb jboss enterprise application platform 6 7.2.0-3.redhat_2.ep6.el6

red hat advisories RHSA-2013:1193

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-2013-2185 updated cvss 7.5

Tomcat/JBossWeb: Arbitrary file upload via deserialization

  • Red Hat JBoss Portal 6 jbossweb jbossweb
    affected: no fix available
  • Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6 for RHEL 5 Server jbossweb 7.2.0-3.redhat_2.ep6.el5 Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6 for RHEL 6 Server jbossweb 7.2.0-3.redhat_2.ep6.el6
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2013:1193
  • Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2013:1194
  • Red Hat JBoss Portal Platform 6.0
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2013:1265
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 tomcat6, tomcat6-lib, tomcat6-log4j, tomcat6-javadoc, tomcat6-webapps, tomcat6-el-2.1-api, +4 more Red Hat JBoss Data Grid 6 jbossweb jbossweb Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Web Server 1 tomcat6 Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Web Server 2 tomcat6, tomcat6-lib, tomcat6-log4j, tomcat6-javadoc, tomcat6-webapps, tomcat7 tomcat7, +6 more
    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

7.20% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 94% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 7.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.apache.tomcat:tomcat
<7.0.39
7.0.39

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation
  • CWE-502 Deserialization of Untrusted Data

References

Sources

Fencer Intel 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.