CVE-2025-68161 (GCVE-0-2025-68161)
Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2025-12-18 20:47 – Updated: 2025-12-19 06:45
VLAI?
Title
Apache Log4j Core: Missing TLS hostname verification in Socket appender
Summary
The Socket Appender in Apache Log4j Core versions 2.0-beta9 through 2.25.2 does not perform TLS hostname verification of the peer certificate, even when the verifyHostName https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/manual/appenders/network.html#SslConfiguration-attr-verifyHostName configuration attribute or the log4j2.sslVerifyHostName https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/manual/systemproperties.html#log4j2.sslVerifyHostName system property is set to true.
This issue may allow a man-in-the-middle attacker to intercept or redirect log traffic under the following conditions:
* The attacker is able to intercept or redirect network traffic between the client and the log receiver.
* The attacker can present a server certificate issued by a certification authority trusted by the Socket Appender’s configured trust store (or by the default Java trust store if no custom trust store is configured).
Users are advised to upgrade to Apache Log4j Core version 2.25.3, which addresses this issue.
As an alternative mitigation, the Socket Appender may be configured to use a private or restricted trust root to limit the set of trusted certificates.
Severity ?
CWE
- CWE-297 - Improper Validation of Certificate with Host Mismatch
Assigner
References
| URL | Tags | |||||||||||||||||||
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Impacted products
| Vendor | Product | Version | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apache Software Foundation | Apache Log4j Core |
Affected:
2.0-beta9 , < 2.25.3
(maven)
Affected: 3.0.0-alpha1 , ≤ 3.0.0-beta3 (maven) |
Credits
Samuli Leinonen
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Sightings
| Author | Source | Type | Date |
|---|
Nomenclature
- Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
- Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
- Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
- Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
- Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
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