Skip to content
Fencer Intel
medium 6.1

CVE-2020-13959 json

Velocity Tools XSS Vulnerability

published 5y ago modified 4mo ago also GHSA-fh63-4r66-jc7v , EUVD-2021-0652

cvss
6.1
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
5.7%
EPSS 5.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 93%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The default error page for VelocityView in Apache Velocity Tools prior to 3.1 reflects back the vm file that was entered as part of the URL. An attacker can set an XSS payload file as this vm file in the URL which results in this payload being executed. XSS vulnerabilities allow attackers to execute arbitrary JavaScript in the context of the attacked website and the attacked user. This can be abused to steal session cookies, perform requests in the name of the victim or for phishing attacks.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.apache.velocity.tools:velocity-tools-parent 3.1
  • Apache Software Foundation Apache Velocity Tools 3.1
  • velocity-tools Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.0-8

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2020-13959

  • velocity-tools Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 2.0-7ubuntu0.20.04.1
  • velocity-tools Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 2.0-4ubuntu0.1~esm1
  • velocity-tools Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS 2.0-7ubuntu0.18.04.1~esm1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2020-13959

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Is CVE-2020-13959 in your dependencies? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

Check with Fencer

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-2020-13959 updated cvss 6.5

velocity: XSS in the default error page for VelocityView

  • Red Hat BPM Suite 6 velocity Red Hat JBoss BRMS 6 velocity Red Hat JBoss Data Virtualization 6 velocity Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6 velocity Red Hat JBoss Fuse Service Works 6 velocity Red Hat JBoss Operations Network 3 velocity
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat A-MQ Clients 2 velocity Red Hat Decision Manager 7 velocity Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 velocity, velocity-demo, velocity-manual, velocity-javadoc Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 velocity, velocity-demo, velocity-manual, velocity-javadoc Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 velocity, velocity-demo, velocity-manual, velocity-javadoc Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 velocity
    +7 more products
    Red Hat Fuse 7 velocity Red Hat Integration Camel K 1 velocity Red Hat JBoss A-MQ 6 velocity Red Hat JBoss Fuse 6 velocity Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.11 openshift3/ose-logging-elasticsearch5 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift4/ose-metering-hive, openshift4/ose-logging-elasticsearch5, openshift4/ose-logging-elasticsearch6 Red Hat Process Automation 7 velocity
    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

5.70% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 93% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 6.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N
NVD 2.0 4.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N
GitHub 3.1 6.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.apache.velocity.tools:velocity-tools-parent
<3.1
3.1
maven org.apache.velocity:velocity-tools
<=2.0
 no fix listed

Affected products

  • Apache Software Foundation Apache Velocity Tools

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-79 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation

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.