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HIGH

tomcat: Remote Code Execution on Windows

Published Apr 15, 2019

Description

When running on Windows with enableCmdLineArguments enabled, the CGI Servlet in Apache Tomcat 9.0.0.M1 to 9.0.17, 8.5.0 to 8.5.39 and 7.0.0 to 7.0.93 is vulnerable to Remote Code Execution due to a bug in the way the JRE passes command line arguments to Windows. The CGI Servlet is disabled by default. The CGI option enableCmdLineArguments is disable by default in Tomcat 9.0.x (and will be disabled by default in all versions in response to this vulnerability). For a detailed explanation of the JRE behaviour, see Markus Wulftange's blog (https://codewhitesec.blogspot.com/2016/02/java-and-command-line-injections-in-windows.html) and this archived MSDN blog (https://web.archive.org/web/20161228144344/https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/twistylittlepassagesallalike/2011/04/23/everyone-quotes-command-line-arguments-the-wrong-way/).

Affected products

Remediation

Red Hat statement

This vulnerability is specific to the Windows platform's treatment of file names and how they must be quoted. Tomcat running on Linux hosts is not affected.

Metrics

References (54)

Change history (0)

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Sources
CVE.org / MITRE
Status PUBLISHED
Assigner apache
Published Apr 15, 2019
Updated Aug 4, 2024
Reserved Nov 14, 2018
NVD
Status Modified
Modified Jun 17, 2026
Red Hat
Severity Important
Public date Apr 10, 2019
GHSA-8VMX-QMCH-MPQG