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Fencer Intel
critical 9.8

CVE-2021-36163 json

Unsafe deserialization in providers using the Hessian protocol

published 5y ago modified 4mo ago also GHSA-cpx9-4rwv-486v , EUVD-2021-2042

cvss
9.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
3.3%
EPSS 3.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 88%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In Apache Dubbo, users may choose to use the Hessian protocol. The Hessian protocol is implemented on top of HTTP and passes the body of a POST request directly to a HessianSkeleton: New HessianSkeleton are created without any configuration of the serialization factory and therefore without applying the dubbo properties for applying allowed or blocked type lists. In addition, the generic service is always exposed and therefore attackers do not need to figure out a valid service/method name pair. This is fixed in 2.7.13, 2.6.10.1

Patch / fix

  • maven org.apache.dubbo:dubbo 2.6.10.1, 2.7.13

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Exploit prediction

3.25% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 88% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/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 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/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.dubbo:dubbo
>=2.7.0, <2.7.13
<2.6.10.1
2.7.13
2.6.10.1

Affected products

  • Apache Software Foundation Apache Dubbo

Classification

Weakness
  • 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.