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Fencer Intel
critical 9.8

CVE-2016-4438 in the critical feed json

Arbitrary code execution in Apache Struts 2

published 2016-07-04 10 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-4prj-vw9j-v6pr , EUVD-2022-2421

cvss
9.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
16.7%
EPSS 16.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 97%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The REST plugin in Apache Struts 2 2.3.19 through 2.3.28.1 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a crafted expression.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.apache.struts:struts2-core 2.3.29
  • maven org.apache.struts:struts2-rest-plugin 2.3.29

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-2016-4438 updated cvss 6.8

struts: Possible RCE via REST plugin

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 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

Exploit prediction

16.74% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 97% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

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
>=2.3.19, <2.3.29
2.3.29
maven org.apache.struts:struts2-rest-plugin
>=2.3.19, <2.3.29
2.3.29

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

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.