Description
The readObject method in the DiskFileItem class in Apache Tomcat and JBoss Web, as used in Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6.1.0 and Red Hat JBoss Portal 6.0.0, allows remote attackers to write to arbitrary files via a NULL byte in a file name in a serialized instance, a similar issue to CVE-2013-2186. NOTE: this issue is reportedly disputed by the Apache Tomcat team, although Red Hat considers it a vulnerability. The dispute appears to regard whether it is the responsibility of applications to avoid providing untrusted data to be deserialized, or whether this class should inherently protect against this issue
Fixed in Linux distributions
Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.
Red Hat
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red Hat JBoss EAP 6 | jbossweb | 7.2.0-3.redhat_2.ep6.el5 | RHSA-2013:1193 |
Affected packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected | Fixed | Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maven | org.apache.tomcat:tomcat | < 7.0.39 | 7.0.39 | GHSA-v6c7-8qx5-8gmp |
Advisories 1
- RHSA-2013:1193 Red Hat Security Advisory: jbossweb security update Red Hat Security Advisories (RHSA) · Aug 5, 2026
References
- [oss-security] 20130905 Re: CVE-2013-2185 / Tomcat mailing-list
- RHSA-2013:1193 vendor-advisory
- RHSA-2013:1265 vendor-advisory
- [oss-security] 20141024 Re: Duplicate Request: CVE-2013-4444 as a duplicate of CVE-2013-2185 mailing-list
- RHSA-2013:1194 vendor-advisory