Managing End-of-Life Spring Vulnerabilities

Spring Framework is a cornerstone of enterprise Java development, depended on by millions for its power and flexibility. However, as with any software, when versions reach end of life and no longer receive security updates, there’s no safety net if a vulnerability is disclosed. Teams with applications on EOL Spring are at risk if they don’t upgrade to a supported version. 

Spring Boot 2.7 became end of life in November 2023, and Spring Framework 5 (which Spring Boot 2.7 relies on) followed suit in August 2024. For those deploying these legacy versions, understanding the vulnerabilities that could be exploited if left unpatched is the first step toward risk management. In this blog, we’ll explore some known Spring CVEs, explain the potential business impacts, and outline a practical path forward for securing your applications if immediately upgrading isn’t possible.

The Cost of Unpatched Spring Vulnerabilities

Security breaches put companies in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. A CVE exploit can lead to staggering financial losses, operational disruption, and long-term damage to your business’s reputation.

• Data Breach Costs: According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach reached $4.45 million in 2023. This includes everything from regulatory fines and legal fees to customer notification and credit monitoring services.
• Downtime and Disruption: A successful Denial of Service (DoS) attack or Remote Code Execution (RCE) exploit can bring your services to a halt. The financial impact of downtime can be immense, particularly for e-commerce applications.
• Reputation and Trust: Customer trust is priceless and very difficult to rebuild once broken. A public security incident can erode confidence in your brand, leading customers to take their dollars elsewhere.

Simply put, ignoring vulnerabilities in EOL software is not a viable strategy, particularly in a crucial framework like Spring. 

EOL Spring Boot and Spring Framework Vulnerabilities

There are several medium, high, and critical severity vulnerabilities known to exist in Spring Framework and Spring Boot. Knowing how these specific threats could impact your apps is essential for prioritizing your security efforts.

Spring Framework Vulnerabilities

Unfortunately, new vulnerabilities that impact Spring Framework 5.3 and later continue to be discovered. 

CVE-2016-1000027: Critical Remote Code Execution (RCE)

• CVSS Score: 9.8 (Critical)
• Threat: This vulnerability allows for remote code execution through unsafe Java deserialization in HttpInvokerServiceExporter. An attacker can send a crafted serialized object to the server, gaining the ability to execute arbitrary code.
• Impact: A successful exploit could lead to a full system compromise. Attackers could steal data, deploy ransomware, or use the compromised server to launch further attacks across your network. Due to its severity, this requires immediate attention.
• Affected Versions: Spring Framework versions through 5.3.16.

CVE-2024-38816 & CVE-2024-38819: High-Severity Path Traversal

• CVSS Score: 7.5 (High)
• Threat: Both vulnerabilities allow for directory traversal attacks when an application serves static resources. By sending a malicious HTTP request, an attacker can navigate outside the intended web root directory.
• Impact: These flaws expose sensitive files, such as configuration files, application source code, and credentials. This information can be used to facilitate further attacks, including data leaks and unauthorized lateral movement within your infrastructure.
• Affected Versions: Spring Framework versions 5.3.0 through 5.3.40, 6.0.0 through 6.0.24 and 6.1.0 through 6.1.13.

CVE-2024-38828: Medium-Severity Denial of Service (DoS)

• CVSS Score: 5.3 (Medium)
• Threat: This vulnerability affects Spring MVC controllers that use @RequestBody byte[]. An attacker can send a massive payload in a request, causing the application to exhaust its memory resources.
• Impact: The primary impact is service unavailability. An exploited server can crash or become unresponsive, leading to application downtime and potential cascading failures in a microservices architecture.
• Affected Versions: Spring Framework versions 5.3.0 through 5.3.41.

CVE-2024-38820: Medium-Severity Data Manipulation

• CVSS Score: 5.3 (Medium)
• Threat: This flaw enables an attacker to bypass disallowedFields checks in Spring's DataBinder due to case-insensitivity issues, particularly in certain locales. This allows them to modify fields that should be restricted.
• Impact: A successful attack compromises data integrity. It can lead to unauthorized changes in application state or even business logic abuse, potentially resulting in privilege escalation.
• Affected Versions: Spring Framework versions 5.3.0 through 5.3.40, 6.0.0 through 6.0.24 and 6.1.0 through 6.1.13.

Spring Boot Vulnerabilities

Spring Boot 2.7, like its framework counterpart, remains a target for new exploits.

CVE-2024-38807: Medium-Severity Signature Spoofing

• CVSS Score: 6.3 (Medium)
• Threat: This vulnerability affects applications that verify signatures for nested JAR files. An attacker can forge a cryptographic signature, making a malicious JAR appear as if it is trusted.
• Impact: This bypass compromises code integrity and can lead to unauthorized code execution if the forged JAR is loaded by the application. It represents a significant supply-chain attack risk.
• Affected Versions: Spring Boot versions 2.7.0 through 2.7.21, 3.0.0 through 3.0.16, 3.1.0 through 3.1.12, 3.2.0 through 3.2.8, and 3.3.0 through 3.3.2.

CVE-2025-22235: High-Severity Authorization Bypass

• CVSS Score: 7.3 (High)
• Threat: A misconfigured endpoint matcher can unintentionally expose sensitive routes, such as actuator endpoints, without requiring authentication.
• Impact: This flaw allows unauthorized actors to access sensitive operational data, including application metrics and configuration details. In some cases, it could even allow for the modification of the system state, leading to compliance violations.
• Affected Versions: Spring Boot versions 2.7.0 through 2.7.24.2, 3.1.0 through 3.1.15.2, 3.2.0 through 3.2.13.2, 3.3.0 through 3.3.10, 3.4.0 through 3.4.4.

Bridging Security Gaps With Long-Term Support

Upgrading to a newer, supported version of Spring is the ideal solution for mitigating these risks. However, large-scale upgrades can take weeks or even months. What can you do in the interim?

This is where Long-Term Support (LTS) becomes an indispensable part of your security strategy. Perforce OpenLogic provides Spring LTS for EOL Spring Boot and Spring Framework. LTS guarantees access to backported security patches for critical and high-severity vulnerabilities (and some CVEs of lesser severity, evaluated on a case-by-case basis), allowing you to secure your applications without undertaking a time-consuming, disruptive migration.

How OpenLogic Spring LTS Works

• Backported Patches: OpenLogic’s expert Java architects develop and test security fixes for EOL versions, addressing vulnerabilities with a CVSS score of 7.0 or higher.
• Security Without Upgrades: Continue running your legacy applications on versions like Spring Framework 5.3 and Spring Boot 2.7 while receiving the security coverage you need.
• Reduced Risk: By patching known vulnerabilities, you protect your business from the costly consequences of a security breach.
• Strategic Planning: LTS gives your development teams the breathing room to plan and execute a thoughtful, well-architected migration to a modern Spring version at a manageable pace.

Spring Long-Term Support is not about avoiding upgrades indefinitely. It is about making a strategic decision to manage risk effectively while you prepare for the future. It acts as an insurance policy, safeguarding your business until you have the resources to execute a complex migration (which OpenLogic can also assist with).

See LTS Details

Final Thoughts

The discovery of new vulnerabilities in EOL software is not a matter of "if" but "when." For organizations running Spring Framework 5.3 or Spring Boot 2.7, not patching is tantamount to burying your head in the sand. It’s a gamble that’s likely to come back to haunt you and your Dev team at some point down the road. 

By partnering with OpenLogic for Spring Long-Term Support, you can secure your critical applications, protect your data, and maintain business continuity. 

Additional Resources

• Blog - Planning Your Next Spring Boot Upgrade
• Blog - The Spring Framework Lifecycle Challenge
• Blog - Understanding CVEs and CVSS Scores
• Video - EOL Software Risks
• Solution - Enterprise Java Stack Support