CriticalCVE-2025-24813

    Apache Tomcat Path Equivalence Vulnerability (CVE-2025-24813)

    Published In CISA KEV since Sources: BSI, SingCERT, NCSC NZ, Debian LTS, Debian, pwn.watch, CVE.org, OSV, SUSE

    What is affected, what to do

    Apache Tomcat has a path equivalence vulnerability allowing remote attackers to execute code, disclose information, or inject malicious content via a partial PUT request. This vulnerability, which can be chained with CVE‑2026‑34486, is actively exploited in the wild. It affects versions from 11.0.0-M1 through 11.0.2, 10.1.0-M1 through 10.1.34, and 9.0.0.M1 through 9.0.98. Users are advised to upgrade to version 11.0.3, 10.1.35, or 9.0.99 to mitigate the risk.

    The vulnerability is being actively exploited; treat it as a priority. Update tomcat to version 9.0.99, Tomcat to version 10.1.35, Secure Connect Gateway to version 5.34.00.16. Immediate actions, mitigation and detection rules are in the runbook below.

    Affected
    • Apache Tomcat lte 11.0.0-M1..11.0.2
    • Apache Tomcat lte 10.1.0-M1..10.1.34
    • Apache Tomcat lte 9.0.0.M1..9.0.98
    • Apache Tomcat lte 8.5.0..8.5.100

    Not sure whether and how you are affected? Ask a question about this vulnerability

    Metrics

    10.0

    Priority

    XIEM Effective CVSS: highest available CVSS rating from NVD and vendor data.

    Source: Vendor (CNA), CVSS v3

    9.8

    CVSS v3

    Severity Critical on the scale from 0 to 10.

    Source: BSI, SingCERT, NCSC NZ, Debian LTS, Debian, pwn.watch, CVE.org, OSV, SUSE

    99.94 %

    EPSS score

    High — model estimates ≥ 50% chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days.

    Source: FIRST EPSS, percentile 99.97

    Show all metrics
    Severity
    Critical
    Priority (0–325)

    The priority score is a consolidated metric that condenses several individual signals into a single, action-guiding ranking: technical severity (CVSS), exploitation likelihood (EPSS), known-exploited status (KEV) and the context of the affected asset. The aim is to answer the only truly important question in vulnerability management: what first?

    Read in glossary
    237.12 Methodology
    Exploit maturity

    An exploit is code or a technique that specifically uses a concrete vulnerability to force unintended behaviour — such as executing code or escalating privileges. It is the tool that turns a theoretical flaw into a practical attack.

    Read in glossary
    actively exploitedSource: VulnCheck KEV (opens in a new tab), NCSC NZ How we classify
    XIEM Effective CVSS

    XIEM® is the tiered managed-security operating model from NEOSEC and a registered trademark of NEOSEC GmbH. It extends classic SIEM — the central collection, normalisation and correlation of security-relevant events — with endpoint forensics, network visibility and deception technology, and consolidates them into three building tiers: Sentry, Orchestrate and Command.

    Read in glossary
    10.0 Methodology
    CVSS v3

    CVSS is the globally established, open standard for assessing the technical severity of a vulnerability on a scale from 0 to 10. It describes how easily a flaw can be exploited and what damage it can cause — but not how likely its actual exploitation is. CVSS and the complementary EPSS deliberately answer different questions.

    Read in glossary
    9.8
    EPSS score

    The EPSS score is the absolute model output for an individual vulnerability: the estimated probability of real-world exploitation within the next 30 days, expressed as a value between 0 and 1 (i.e. 0 % to 100 %). A score of 0.42 means „the model estimates a 42 % chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days“.

    Read in glossary
    99.94 %
    High — model estimates ≥ 50% chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days.
    EPSS percentile

    The EPSS percentile is the relative position of a vulnerability within all EPSS-scored CVEs, expressed as a value between 0 and 1. A percentile of 0.90 means „this CVE has a higher EPSS score than 90 % of all other scored CVEs“. Unlike the EPSS score, it is not a probability — but a positioning within a ranking.

    Read in glossary
    99.97
    Critical — this CVE ranks in the top fifth of all CVEs scored today (rank ≥ 80%).
    KEV status

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary
    Actively exploited
    Published
    In CISA KEV since

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary
    CWE

    CWE is a catalogue of typical weakness types in software and hardware — such as flawed input validation, unsafe memory handling or poor authentication. Where a CVE names a concrete vulnerability in a concrete product, a CWE describes the underlying class of defect.

    Read in glossary
    CWE-44, CWE-502

    Response and mitigation

    Why act now?

    Prioritisation rationale

    The flaw is unauthenticated, network-reachable, and leads to full remote code execution through a deserialisation chain; its exploitation likelihood is among the highest currently tracked and it sits on CISA KEV. Mass scanning for exposed Tomcat instances with readonly=false has been active since public PoC release and primarily affects stock installations, custom Spring Boot deployments and legacy 8.5.x estates. For NIS2-scope organisations, every internet-reachable Tomcat instance should be treated as P1 and any internal deployment with readonly=false as P2. The combination of maximum CIA impact, trivial exploitation path and the ubiquity of Tomcat in Java enterprise stacks justifies invoking an emergency change window within 72 hours.

    1. Runbook step 1

      Immediate response (0-24 h)

      • Patch now: upgrade Apache Tomcat to 11.0.3, 10.1.35 or 9.0.99. EOL branches (8.5.x and older) will not receive a backport — migration to a supported line is mandatory.
      • Inventory: locate every Tomcat instance including OS packages, standalone installs, embedded Tomcat/Catalina inside fat-JARs, and Spring Boot apps using spring-boot-starter-tomcat. Match against the affected version ranges.
      • Disable Default Servlet write access: in conf/web.xml, confirm the org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet block does not set readonly to false (default is true). Any explicit readonly=false is the attack enabler and must be reverted.
      • Block partial PUT requests at the edge: configure the fronting reverse proxy (nginx, Apache httpd, HAProxy, F5, Cloudflare, Azure Front Door) to drop PUT methods against Tomcat application paths unless the app genuinely needs PUT uploads. Also filter the Content-Range header on any PUT.
      • Audit file-based session persistence: search context.xml for <Manager className="org.apache.catalina.session.PersistentManager"> with FileStore. If present, migrate to a JDBC store or in-memory sessions, or relocate the directory path outside any HTTP-reachable upload area.
      • Prioritise exposed hosts: internet-reachable Tomcat servers (typically ports 8080/8443 or behind a reverse proxy) first; internal management ports (8005 shutdown, 8009 AJP) in the follow-up audit.

    2. Runbook step 2

      Mitigation layers

      • Network segmentation: never expose Tomcat directly; always front it with a reverse proxy. Restrict /manager and /host-manager to an admin VLAN with source-IP allow-listing.
      • WAF rule: block HTTP requests with method PUT carrying a Content-Range header against *.jsp, *.xml, *.properties, or paths containing URL-encoded dots (%2E, /./, trailing-dot names like file.jsp/.). ModSecurity sketch: SecRule REQUEST_METHOD "@streq PUT" "chain,deny" SecRule REQUEST_HEADERS:Content-Range "@rx .+".
      • IPS signatures: deploy the CVE-2025-24813 rulesets from Emerging Threats / Talos — pattern is partial PUT against Default Servlet paths with internal-dot name variations.
      • Deserialisation hardening: audit the classpath for well-known gadget-chain libraries (Commons-Collections 3.x/4.x, Commons-BeanUtils, Groovy, ROME, Spring-core); remove whatever is unused. Where possible, enable JEP 290 jdk.serialFilter or a SerialKiller filter.
      • Filesystem permissions: place the Catalina work directory and the session persistence directory under a path that the Tomcat user can write to but that the Default Servlet does not expose via URL mapping. Keep upload directories strictly outside $CATALINA_BASE/work.
      • Least privilege: run Tomcat as a dedicated unprivileged service user (systemd NoNewPrivileges=yes, ProtectSystem=strict, read-only webapps/).

    3. Runbook step 3

      Detection rules

      • Web access logs: alert on PUT requests returning 2xx with suspicious path patterns (/.*/file.*\./, URL-encoded dots, trailing-dot filenames). KQL sketch: WebLogs | where csMethod == "PUT" and (csUriStem contains "/./" or csUriStem endswith ".") | where scStatus between (200 .. 299).
      • Sysmon EID 11 (FileCreate) and EID 1 (ProcessCreate) on Tomcat hosts: newly created .session files under the Catalina work directory followed by java.exe/java spawning cmd.exe, powershell.exe, /bin/sh, bash — the classic deserialisation RCE chain.
      • Linux auditd: watch rules -w /opt/tomcat/work -p wa and -w /opt/tomcat/webapps -p wa; alert on writes outside maintenance windows. Correlate with execve syscalls whose ppid is the Tomcat JVM.
      • Network telemetry (Zeek http.log): method == "PUT" with request_body_len > 0 and uri containing a dot as a path segment; correlate with partial-content responses.
      • EDR process ancestry: Java process spawning shells, netcat, curl, wget, base64 decoders or PowerShell downloaders — Sigma pattern parent_image|endswith: '\java.exe' AND image|endswith: ('\cmd.exe', '\powershell.exe', '\certutil.exe').

    Detection rules

    No NEOSEC detection rule is available for this vulnerability yet.

    Classification under NIS2 and CRA

    Rule-based classification from exploitation status and severity. It does not replace a case-by-case assessment.

    NIS2

    NIS2 is EU Directive (EU) 2022/2555 to raise the level of cybersecurity across the Union. It substantially broadens obligations compared with the first NIS directive: more sectors, mandatory risk management, staged reporting duties and personal accountability of senior management.

    Read in glossary
    Actively exploited: treat the vulnerability as a priority in vulnerability handling under Art. 21(2)(e) NIS2. If it is exploited in your environment, check the reporting obligation under Art. 23 (early warning within 24 hours).
    CRA

    The CRA is EU Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 setting horizontal cybersecurity requirements for „products with digital elements“ — from industrial controllers and software to connected consumer devices. For the first time manufacturers must ensure security across the entire product lifecycle, handle vulnerabilities and provide security updates.

    Read in glossary
    Since 11.09.2026, manufacturers of affected products with digital elements must report actively exploited vulnerabilities under Art. 14 CRA, with an early warning within 24 hours via ENISA's single reporting platform.
    ISO/IEC 27001

    ISO/IEC 27001 is the internationally leading standard for an information security management system (ISMS). It describes a risk-based, process-oriented framework to systematically plan, implement, review and improve information security.

    Read in glossary
    Control A.8.8, management of technical vulnerabilities: assess relevance to your systems, plan remediation and keep evidence.

    Description

    Path Equivalence: 'file.Name' (Internal Dot) leading to Remote Code Execution and/or Information disclosure and/or malicious content added to uploaded files via write enabled Default Servlet in Apache Tomcat.

    This issue affects Apache Tomcat: from 11.0.0-M1 through 11.0.2, from 10.1.0-M1 through 10.1.34, from 9.0.0.M1 through 9.0.98. The following versions were EOL at the time the CVE was created but are known to be affected: 8.5.0 though 8.5.100. Other, older, EOL versions may also be affected.

    If all of the following were true, a malicious user was able to view security sensitive files and/or inject content into those files: - writes enabled for the default servlet (disabled by default)

    • support for partial PUT (enabled by default)
    • a target URL for security sensitive uploads that was a sub-directory of a target URL for public uploads - attacker knowledge of the names of security sensitive files being uploaded - the security sensitive files also being uploaded via partial PUT

    If all of the following were true, a malicious user was able to perform remote code execution:

    • writes enabled for the default servlet (disabled by default) - support for partial PUT (enabled by default) - application was using Tomcat's file based session persistence with the default storage location - application included a library that may be leveraged in a deserialization attack

    Users are recommended to upgrade to version 11.0.3, 10.1.35 or 9.0.99, which fixes the issue.

    Source: BSI CSAF, BSI WID Portal, CSA/SingCERT, NCSC NZ (CC BY 4.0), Debian LTS Advisories, Debian Security Advisories, pwn.watch, NVD (NIST), OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities), cvelistv5, CISA KEV Catalog, CVE.org (MITRE), suse_csaf

    Affected products

    The following versions are affected. Older releases of the same product line are also vulnerable unless stated otherwise.

    Affected products
    Affected versionsFixed in
    Apache Software FoundationApache Tomcat
    • 8.5.0 – ≤ 8.5.100
    • 9.0.0.M1 – ≤ 9.0.98
    • 11.0.0-M1 – ≤ 11.0.2
    • 10.1.0-M1 – ≤ 10.1.34
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    apachetomcat
    • 10.1.0
    • 11.0.0
    • < 9.0.99
    • 10.1.1 – < 10.1.35
    • 11.0.1 – < 11.0.3
    • —
    • —
    • 9.0.99
    • 10.1.35
    • 11.0.3
    ApacheTomcat
    • < 10.1.35
    • < 11.0.3
    • < 9.0.99
    • 10.1.35
    • 11.0.3
    • 9.0.99
    DellSecure Connect Gateway
    • < 5.34.00.16
    • < 5.30.0.14
    • 5.34.00.16
    • 5.30.0.14
    EVE-NGEVE-NG
    • < 6.4.0-1
    • 6.4.0-1
    IBMIntegration Bus
    • z/OS <10.1.0.5 PH65935
    • —
    IBMQRadar SIEM
    • <7.5.0 UP11 IF04
    • —
    OracleCommunications
    • 24.2.5
    • 10.0.0
    • 14.0.0
    • 9.1.1.9
    • 22.4.0
    • 15.0.0
    • 9.0.2
    • 9.0.0.0
    • 4.2.0
    • 15.0.2
    • 9.0.1
    • 9.0.0
    • 24.2.0
    • 5.2
    • 24.1.0
    • 15.0.1
    • 15.0.0.0.0
    • 25.1.100
    • 9.3.0
    • 9.2.0
    • 4.1.0
    • 24.2.3
    • 46.6
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    Red HatJBoss Web Server
    • < 5.8.3
    • 5.8.3
    XeroxFreeFlow Print Server
    • 9
    • —
    mavenorg.apache.tomcat.embed:tomcat-embed-core
    • 11.0.0-M25
    • 9.0.12
    • 8.5.87
    • 10.1.8
    • 11.0.0-M1
    • 8.5.45
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —

    Vendors and products

    Affected operating systems

    Affected operating systems
    Linuxdebiandebian_linux11.0
    Linuxdebiantomcat10bookworm
    Linuxdebiantomcat9bullseye
    Othernetappbootstrap_os—

    Weakness classes (CWE)

    • CWE-44Path Equivalence: 'file.name' (Internal Dot)

      Variant

      The product accepts path input in the form of internal dot ('file.ordir') without appropriate validation, which can lead to ambiguous path resolution and allow an attacker to traverse the file system to unintended locations or access arbitrary files.

      Entry at MITRE CWE-44

    • CWE-502Deserialization of Untrusted Data

      Base

      The product deserializes untrusted data without sufficiently ensuring that the resulting data will be valid.

      Entry at MITRE CWE-502

    Public exploit references

    Publicly reported proof-of-concepts, exploit modules and detection templates for this vulnerability. NEOSEC links to the original sources only and does not provide any exploit code.

    Public exploit references
    CISA KEV CatalogCISA Known Exploited Vulnerability (opens in a new tab)cisa.govactively exploited
    NCSC NZCVE-2025-24813 affecting Apache Tomcat (opens in a new tab)NCSC NZactively exploited
    GitHubabsholi7ly/POC-CVE-2025-24813 (opens in a new tab)github.comPoC (publicly reported)reported, not verified—
    PoC-in-GitHub (nomi-sec)CVE-2025-24813-Tomcat11-Lab (opens in a new tab)github.comPoC (publicly reported)reported, not verified
    PoC-in-GitHub (nomi-sec)nuclei-CVE-2025-24813 (opens in a new tab)github.comPoC (publicly reported)reported, not verified
    PoC-in-GitHub (nomi-sec)tomcat-cve-2025-24813-lab (opens in a new tab)github.comPoC (publicly reported)reported, not verified
    PoC-in-GitHub (nomi-sec)CVE-2025-24813 (opens in a new tab)github.comPoC (publicly reported)reported, not verified
    PoC-in-GitHub (nomi-sec)CVE-2025-24813 (opens in a new tab)github.comPoC (publicly reported)reported, not verified
    PoC-in-GitHub (nomi-sec)Apache-Tomcat-CVE-2025-24813-Lab (opens in a new tab)github.comPoC (publicly reported)reported, not verified

    References & sources

    • NVD (NIST)NVD: CVE-2025-24813advisory, pwn-watch
    • github.comapache/tomcat/commit/0a668e0c27f2b7ca0cc7c6eea32253b9b5ecb29cweb
    • github.comapache/tomcat/commit/eb61aade8f8daccaecabf07d428b877975622f72web
    • github.comapache/tomcat/commit/f6c01d6577cf9a1e06792be47e623d36acc3b5dcweb
    • github.comabsholi7ly/POC-CVE-2025-24813/blob/main/README.mdweb, Exploit, Exploit
    • github.comapache/tomcatpackage
    • lists.apache.orgApache advisory: Apache Tomcatweb, Vendor advisory, Vendor advisory, pwn-watch
    • lists.debian.orgdebian-lts-announce/2025/04/msg00003.htmlweb, Mailing list, Third-party advisory
    • security.netapp.comadvisory/ntap-20250321-0001web
    • cisa.govknown-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2025-24813web, government-resource, Third-party advisory, US government resource
    • vicarius.iovsociety/posts/cve-2025-24813-detect-apache-tomcat-rceweb, Issue tracking
    • vicarius.iovsociety/posts/cve-2025-24813-mitigate-apache-tomcat-rceweb, Issue tracking
    • vicarius.iovsociety/posts/cve-2025-24813-tomcat-detect-vulnerabilityweb, Issue tracking
    • vicarius.iovsociety/posts/cve-2025-24813-tomcat-mitigation-vulnerabilityweb, Issue tracking
    • openwall.comlists/oss-security/2025/03/10/5web, Mailing list, Third-party advisory
    • security.netapp.comadvisory/ntap-20250321-0001Third-party advisory
    • pwn.watchpwn.watch: Apache Tomcat: Tomcat Path Equivalence Vulnerabilitypwn-watch
    • cisa.govCISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalogpwn-watch
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