An issue was discovered in the Maven Extension plugin before 1.6 for Gradle Enterprise. The extension uses a socket connection to send serialized Java objects. Deserialization is not restricted to an allow-list, thus allowing an attacker to achieve code execution via a malicious deserialization gadget chain. The socket is not bound exclusively to localhost. The port this socket is assigned to is randomly selected and is not intentionally exposed to the public (either by design or documentation). This could potentially be used to achieve remote code execution and local privilege escalation.
The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently verifying that the resulting data will be valid.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maven | Gradle | * | 1.6 (excluding) |
It is often convenient to serialize objects for communication or to save them for later use. However, deserialized data or code can often be modified without using the provided accessor functions if it does not use cryptography to protect itself. Furthermore, any cryptography would still be client-side security – which is a dangerous security assumption. Data that is untrusted can not be trusted to be well-formed. When developers place no restrictions on “gadget chains,” or series of instances and method invocations that can self-execute during the deserialization process (i.e., before the object is returned to the caller), it is sometimes possible for attackers to leverage them to perform unauthorized actions, like generating a shell.