Package Instance

Spring Framework Path Traversal vulnerability
Applications serving static resources through the functional web frameworks WebMvc.fn or WebFlux.fn are vulnerable to path traversal attacks. An attacker can craft malicious HTTP requests and obtain any file on the file system that is also accessible to the process in which the Spring application is running.

Path traversal vulnerability in functional web frameworks
Applications serving static resources through the functional web frameworks WebMvc.fn or WebFlux.fn are vulnerable to path traversal attacks. An attacker can craft malicious HTTP requests and obtain any file on the file system that is also accessible to the process in which the Spring application is running.

Specifically, an application is vulnerable when both of the following are true:

  *  the web application uses RouterFunctions to serve static resources
  *  resource handling is explicitly configured with a FileSystemResource location


However, malicious requests are blocked and rejected when any of the following is true:

  *  the  Spring Security HTTP Firewall https://docs.spring.io/spring-security/reference/servlet/exploits/firewall.html  is in use
  *  the application runs on Tomcat or Jetty

Spring Framework MVC Applications Path Traversal Vulnerability
Spring Framework MVC applications can be vulnerable to a “Path Traversal Vulnerability” when deployed on a non-compliant Servlet container.

An application can be vulnerable when all the following are true:

  *  the application is deployed as a WAR or with an embedded Servlet container
  *  the Servlet container  does not reject suspicious sequences https://jakarta.ee/specifications/servlet/6.1/jakarta-servlet-spec-6.1.html#uri-path-canonicalization 
  *  the application  serves static resources https://docs.spring.io/spring-framework/reference/web/webmvc/mvc-config/static-resources.html#page-title  with Spring resource handling


We have verified that applications deployed on Apache Tomcat or Eclipse Jetty are not vulnerable, as long as default security features are not disabled in the configuration. Because we cannot check exploits against all Servlet containers and configuration variants, we strongly recommend upgrading your application.