GHSA-vc5p-v9hr-52mj
Apache Log4j does not verify the TLS hostname in its Socket Appender
At a glance
- Published
- Updated
- CVE
- CVE-2025-68161
- CVSS_V4
- CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N
Description
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.
Affected packages
| Package | Versions |
|---|---|
| Maven · org.apache.logging.log4j:log4j-core | introduced 2.0-beta9, fixed 2.25.3 |
References
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-68161 ADVISORY
- https://github.com/apache/logging-log4j2/pull/4002 WEB
- https://github.com/apache/logging-log4j2/commit/3b93748497e1adbbd027fda8a5e7268ec5d0d578 WEB
- https://github.com/apache/logging-log4j2 WEB
- https://lists.apache.org/thread/xr33kyxq3sl67lwb61ggvm1fzc8k7dvx WEB
- https://logging.apache.org/cyclonedx/vdr.xml WEB
- https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/manual/appenders/network.html#SslConfiguration-attr-verifyHostName WEB
- https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/manual/systemproperties.html#log4j2.sslVerifyHostName WEB
- https://logging.apache.org/security.html#CVE-2025-68161 WEB
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/12/18/1 WEB
Sources
| Source | Licence |
|---|---|
| OSV.dev | CC-BY 4.0 — GitHub Advisory Database |