VDB-196076 · CVE-2022-22965 · Nessus 253555

VMware Spring Boot up to 2.5.11/2.6.5 SpringShell code injection

CVSS Meta Temp Score CVSS is a standardized scoring system to determine possibilities of attacks. The Temp Score considers temporal factors like disclosure, exploit and countermeasures. The unique Meta Score calculates the average score of different sources to provide a normalized scoring system.	Current Exploit Price (≈) Our analysts are monitoring exploit markets and are in contact with vulnerability brokers. The range indicates the observed or calculated exploit price to be seen on exploit markets. A good indicator to understand the monetary effort required for and the popularity of an attack.	CTI Interest Score Our Cyber Threat Intelligence team is monitoring different web sites, mailing lists, exploit markets and social media networks. The CTI Interest Score identifies the interest of attackers and the security community for this specific vulnerability in real-time. A high score indicates an elevated risk to be targeted for this vulnerability.
9.7	$0-$5k	0.00

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in VMware Spring Boot up to 2.5.11/2.6.5. It has been declared as very critical. Affected by this issue is some unknown functionality. Such manipulation leads to code injection. This vulnerability is documented as CVE-2022-22965. The attack can be executed remotely. Additionally, an exploit exists. It is recommended to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as very critical, has been found in VMware Spring Boot up to 2.5.11/2.6.5. Affected by this issue is some unknown processing. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a code injection vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-94. The product constructs all or part of a code segment using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify the syntax or behavior of the intended code segment. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

A Spring MVC or Spring WebFlux application running on JDK 9+ may be vulnerable to remote code execution (RCE) via data binding. The specific exploit requires the application to run on Tomcat as a WAR deployment. If the application is deployed as a Spring Boot executable jar, i.e. the default, it is not vulnerable to the exploit. However, the nature of the vulnerability is more general, and there may be other ways to exploit it.

Spring Boot and Spring Framework are affected by this issue which requires JDK9 or higher, Apache Tomcat as the Servlet container, the package as traditional WAR, and spring-webmvc or spring-webflux dependency.

The weakness was released 03/30/2022 as SpringShell: Spring Core RCE 0-day Vulnerability. The advisory is shared for download at cyberkendra.com. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2022-22965. No form of authentication is required for exploitation. Technical details are unknown but a public exploit is available. The current price for an exploit might be approx. USD $0-$5k (estimation calculated on 08/23/2025). The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1059.

The exploit is available at github.com. It is declared as attacked. As 0-day the estimated underground price was around $5k-$25k. The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 253555 (Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2022-22965), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment. This issue was added on 04/04/2022 to the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog with a due date of 04/25/2022:

Apply updates per vendor instructions.

Upgrading to version 5.2.20 or 5.3.18 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch 7f7fb58dd0dae86d22268a4b59ac7c72a6c22529 is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at github.com. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Zero-Day.cz (695) and Tenable (253555). tools.cisco.com is providing further details. Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

Affected

VMware Spring Boot 2.5.11/2.6.5
VMware Spring Framework 5.2.19/5.3.17

Productinfo

Vendor

VMware

Name

Spring Boot

Version

License

commercial

Website

Vendor: https://www.vmware.com/

CPE 2.3info

CPE 2.2info

CVSSv4info

VulDB Vector: 🔍
VulDB Reliability: 🔍

CVSSv3info

VulDB Meta Base Score: 9.8
VulDB Meta Temp Score: 9.7

VulDB Base Score: 9.8
VulDB Temp Score: 9.4
VulDB Vector: 🔍
VulDB Reliability: 🔍

Vendor Base Score (VMware): 9.8
Vendor Vector (VMware): 🔍

NVD Base Score: 9.8
NVD Vector: 🔍

CNA Base Score: 9.8
CNA Vector: 🔍

CVSSv2info

AV	AC	Au	C	I	A
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💳	💳	💳	💳	💳	💳
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Vector	Complexity	Authentication	Confidentiality	Integrity	Availability
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VulDB Base Score: 🔍
VulDB Temp Score: 🔍
VulDB Reliability: 🔍

NVD Base Score: 🔍

Exploitinginfo

Class: Code injection
CWE: CWE-94 / CWE-74 / CWE-707
CAPEC: 🔍
ATT&CK: 🔍

Physical: No
Local: No
Remote: Yes

Availability: 🔍
Access: Public
Status: Attacked
Download: 🔍

EPSS Score: 🔍
EPSS Percentile: 🔍

KEV Added: 🔍
KEV Due: 🔍
KEV Remediation: 🔍
KEV Ransomware: 🔍
KEV Notice: 🔍

Price Prediction: 🔍
Current Price Estimation: 🔍

0-Day	Unlock	Unlock	Unlock	Unlock
Today	Unlock	Unlock	Unlock	Unlock

Nessus ID: 253555
Nessus Name: Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2022-22965

Zero-Day.cz: 🔍

Threat Intelligenceinfo

Interest: 🔍
Active Actors: 🔍
Active APT Groups: 🔍

Countermeasuresinfo

Recommended: Upgrade
Status: 🔍

0-Day Time: 🔍

Upgrade: Spring Boot 5.2.20/5.3.18
Patch: 7f7fb58dd0dae86d22268a4b59ac7c72a6c22529
Workaround: cyberkendra.com