An issue was discovered in Pivotal Spring Web Flow through 2.4.5. Applications that do not change the value of the MvcViewFactoryCreator useSpringBinding property which is disabled by default (i.e., set to false) can be vulnerable to malicious EL expressions in view states that process form submissions but do not have a sub-element to declare explicit data binding property mappings. NOTE: this issue exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2017-4971.
The product initializes or sets a resource with a default that is intended to be changed by the administrator, but the default is not secure.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring_web_flow | Pivotal | 2.4.0 (including) | 2.4.0 (including) |
| Spring_web_flow | Pivotal | 2.4.1 (including) | 2.4.1 (including) |
| Spring_web_flow | Pivotal | 2.4.2 (including) | 2.4.2 (including) |
| Spring_web_flow | Pivotal | 2.4.4 (including) | 2.4.4 (including) |
| Spring_web_flow | Pivotal | 2.4.5 (including) | 2.4.5 (including) |
Developers often choose default values that leave the product as open and easy to use as possible out-of-the-box, under the assumption that the administrator can (or should) change the default value. However, this ease-of-use comes at a cost when the default is insecure and the administrator does not change it.