Moderate severity vulnerability that affects org.springframework.boot:spring-boot

published 2018-03-19 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-xx65-cc7g-9pfp , EUVD-2018-0721

cvss: 5.9; version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 1.2%; EPSS 1.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 68%
public exploits: 0; none known

Spring Boot supports an embedded launch script that can be used to easily run the application as a systemd or init.d linux service. The script included with Spring Boot 1.5.9 and earlier and 2.0.0.M1 through 2.0.0.M7 is susceptible to a symlink attack which allows the "run_user" to overwrite and take ownership of any file on the same system. In order to instigate the attack, the application must be installed as a service and the "run_user" requires shell access to the server. Spring Boot application that are not installed as a service, or are not using the embedded launch script are not susceptible.

Patch / fix

fixed in 1

maven org.springframework.boot:spring-boot 1.5.10

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-2018-1196 updated 2026-11-02 cvss 6.8

Boot: Symlink privilege escalation attack via launch script

Red Hat JBoss Fuse 6 spring-boot Red Hat OpenShift Application Runtimes spring-boot
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

1.21% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 68% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
NVD	3.0	5.9	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
NVD	2.0	4.3	AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N
GitHub	3.0	5.9	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem	package	affected	fixed in
maven	org.springframework.boot:spring-boot	>=1.5.0, <1.5.10	1.5.10

Affected products

Dell EMC Spring Boot

Classification

Weakness

CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access

Technology feeds

Spring rss critical rss

References

pivotal.io /security/cve-2018-1196
web, vendor-advisory
nvd.nist.gov /vuln/detail/CVE-2018-1196
advisory
github.com /advisories/GHSA-xx65-cc7g-9pfp
advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2018-1196
GitHub Advisory GHSA-xx65-cc7g-9pfp
NVD CVE-2018-1196

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.

Summary