CriticalCVE-2018-18809

    TIBCO JasperReports Library Directory Traversal Vulnerability (CVE-2018-18809)

    Published In CISA KEV since Sources: CVE.org

    What is affected, what to do

    The default server implementation of TIBCO Software Inc.'s TIBCO JasperReports Library, TIBCO JasperReports Library Community Edition, TIBCO JasperReports Library for ActiveMatrix BPM, TIBCO JasperReports Server, TIBCO JasperReports Server Community Edition, TIBCO JasperReports Server for ActiveMatrix BPM, TIBCO Jaspersoft for AWS with Multi-Tenancy, and TIBCO Jaspersoft Reporting and Analytics for AWS contains a directory-traversal vulnerability that may theoretically allow web server users to access contents of the host system. Affected releases are TIBCO Software Inc.'s TIBCO JasperReports Library: versions up to and including 6.3.4; 6.4.1; 6.4.2; 6.4.21; 7.1.0; 7.2.0, TIBCO JasperReports Library Community Edition: versions up to and including 6.7.0, TIBCO JasperReports Library for ActiveMatrix BPM: versions up to and including 6.4.21, TIBCO JasperReports Server: versions up to and including 6.3.4; 6.4.0; 6.4.1; 6.4.2; 6.4.3; 7.1.0, TIBCO JasperReports Server Community Edition: versions up to and including 6.4.3; 7.1.0, TIBCO JasperReports Server for ActiveMatrix BPM: versions up to and including 6.4.3, TIBCO Jaspersoft for AWS with Multi-Tenancy: versions up to and including 7.1.0, TIBCO Jaspersoft Reporting and Analytics for AWS: versions up to and including 7.1.0.

    The vulnerability is being actively exploited; treat it as a priority. The available sources name no fixed version. Check the vendor guidance in the references below. Immediate actions, mitigation and detection rules are in the runbook below.

    Affected
    • TIBCO JasperReports Library lte *..6.3.4
    • TIBCO JasperReports Library eq 6.4.1..6.4.1
    • TIBCO JasperReports Library eq 6.4.2..6.4.2
    • TIBCO JasperReports Library eq 6.4.21..6.4.21
    • TIBCO JasperReports Library eq 7.1.0..7.1.0
    • TIBCO JasperReports Library eq 7.2.0..7.2.0
    • TIBCO JasperReports Library Community Edition lte *..6.7.0
    • TIBCO JasperReports Library for ActiveMatrix BPM lte *..6.4.21
    • TIBCO JasperReports Server lte *..6.3.4
    • TIBCO JasperReports Server eq 6.4.0..6.4.0
    • TIBCO JasperReports Server eq 6.4.1..6.4.1
    • TIBCO JasperReports Server eq 6.4.2..6.4.2
    • TIBCO JasperReports Server eq 6.4.3..6.4.3
    • TIBCO JasperReports Server eq 7.1.0..7.1.0
    • TIBCO JasperReports Server Community Edition lte *..6.4.3
    • TIBCO JasperReports Server Community Edition eq 7.1.0..7.1.0
    • TIBCO JasperReports Server for ActiveMatrix BPM lte *..6.4.3
    • TIBCO Jaspersoft for AWS with Multi-Tenancy lte *..7.1.0
    • TIBCO Jaspersoft Reporting and Analytics for AWS lte *..7.1.0

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

    Metrics

    9.9

    Priority

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

    Source: Vendor (CNA), CVSS v3

    9.9

    CVSS v3

    Severity Critical on the scale from 0 to 10.

    Source: CVE.org

    79.1 %

    EPSS score

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

    Source: FIRST EPSS, percentile 99.60

    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
    228.86 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 exploited
    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
    9.9 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
    9.9
    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
    79.1 %
    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
    99.60
    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
    CISA assessment (SSVC)
    Exploitation: active · not automatable · Technical impact: total
    Source: CISA Vulnrichment, as of 7 February 2025
    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-22

    Response and mitigation

    Why act now?

    Prioritisation rationale

    This CVE is on KEV because JasperReports instances are frequently exposed to the Internet or to partner networks and often remain reachable over HTTP with low-privilege accounts (sometimes still at defaults like jasperadmin) — the CVSS vector reflects network-reachable exploitation with minimal authentication and no user interaction. Exploitation likelihood is among the highest tracked, and public PoC code has existed for years; typical attacker goals are grabbing configuration files with DB credentials, AWS metadata tokens, and keystore material to pivot. Treat as HIGH priority, especially where JasperReports is embedded as an OEM component in customer-facing SaaS portals, DMZ BI stacks, or AWS reporting workloads. CISA does not flag ransomware use for this CVE; the real leverage is credential theft and subsequent compromise of the database backend.

    1. Runbook step 1

      Immediate response (0-24 h)

      • Inventory every JasperReports footprint (Library, Server, Community Edition, ActiveMatrix BPM integration, Jaspersoft for AWS) — including embedded reporting components shipped as OEM inside ERP, BI or portal products.
      • Apply the vendor patch: JasperReports Library to 6.4.3 / 6.4.22 / 7.1.1 / 7.2.1 or later, JasperReports Server to 6.3.5 / 6.4.4 / 7.1.1 or later. For Jaspersoft AWS AMIs, redeploy from the current Marketplace build. Confirm exact target versions in TIBCO advisory 2019-003.
      • Immediately restrict external reachability: put the JasperReports server (default Tomcat ports 8080/8443) behind a reverse proxy or WAF and limit access to authenticated networks (VPN, zero-trust proxy) until patched.
      • Rotate the service-account credentials under which Tomcat/JBoss runs JasperReports, plus any database connection strings in jasperserver.properties, if the instance was exposed prior to patching.
      • At OS level, audit which files the web-server user can read (/etc/passwd, keystores, application.properties, AWS instance-metadata credentials in ~/.aws/credentials) and isolate sensitive paths from the Tomcat UID with filesystem ACLs.

    2. Runbook step 2

      Mitigation layers

      • WAF rule in front of JasperReports: block requests to report URIs (/jasperserver/rest_v2/reports/, /jasperserver/flow.html, /jasperserver/servlets/) that contain traversal patterns (..%2f, ..%5c, %2e%2e/, double-encoded %252e%252e) or references to WEB-INF, /etc/, C:\Windows\.
      • Network segmentation: place JasperReports in a dedicated reporting zone, whitelist outbound connections to the specific backend databases/ports only, and allow Internet egress only via a proxy with an allow-list (defeats pull-back and metadata-exfil scenarios).
      • Harden the Tomcat/container: run as an unprivileged user, enable the catalina.policy SecurityManager, set allowLinking="false" and disable aliases, and deny access to OS paths outside JASPERSERVER_HOME via an SELinux/AppArmor profile.
      • Least-privilege IAM: scope the database logins used by JasperReports to report-only schemas, never dbo/sysadmin/SUPER. In AWS, trim the instance-role IAM policy to required S3 buckets only and enforce IMDSv2.
      • Disable reporting features you do not use (XML/CSV import data sources, scheduler file output, Groovy scripting reports) to shrink the attack surface of the report engine.

    3. Runbook step 3

      Detection rules

      • Access-log hunt on the reverse proxy or Tomcat (localhost_access_log): requests containing .., %2e%2e, %252e, ..%5c, WEB-INF/web.xml, jasperserver.properties, shadow, boot.ini in URI or query — Sigma-shape: selection: cs-uri-stem|contains: '/jasperserver/' AND cs-uri-query|re: '(?i)(\.\.(/|\\|%2f|%5c))'.
      • Enable Suricata/Snort signatures for HTTP requests to JasperServer paths carrying directory-traversal payloads; verify ET Open rules for CVE-2018-18809 are present and current.
      • EDR/Sysmon (EID 1 + EID 11): Tomcat/Java process (java.exe, catalina.sh) reading paths outside JASPERSERVER_HOME — especially /etc/passwd, /root/.ssh/, C:\Users\*\.aws\, keystore files. Linux auditd: -w /etc/shadow -p r -k jasper_traversal.
      • SIEM correlation: HTTP 200 response to a suspicious traversal request with kilobyte-range response body (indicator of successful file exfiltration) — KQL: W3CIISLog | where csUriStem contains "jasperserver" and csUriQuery matches regex @"(\.\.|%2e%2e)" and scStatus == 200.
      • Netflow/Zeek: elevated outbound response volume from the JasperReports host to external IPs or atypical clients outside the normal BI-user range following traversal alerts.

    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

    The default server implementation of TIBCO Software Inc.'s TIBCO JasperReports Library, TIBCO JasperReports Library Community Edition, TIBCO JasperReports Library for ActiveMatrix BPM, TIBCO JasperReports Server, TIBCO JasperReports Server Community Edition, TIBCO JasperReports Server for ActiveMatrix BPM, TIBCO Jaspersoft for AWS with Multi-Tenancy, and TIBCO Jaspersoft Reporting and Analytics for AWS contains a directory-traversal vulnerability that may theoretically allow web server users to access contents of the host system. Affected releases are TIBCO Software Inc.'s TIBCO JasperReports Library: versions up to and including 6.3.4; 6.4.1; 6.4.2; 6.4.21; 7.1.0; 7.2.0, TIBCO JasperReports Library Community Edition: versions up to and including 6.7.0, TIBCO JasperReports Library for ActiveMatrix BPM: versions up to and including 6.4.21, TIBCO JasperReports Server: versions up to and including 6.3.4; 6.4.0; 6.4.1; 6.4.2; 6.4.3; 7.1.0, TIBCO JasperReports Server Community Edition: versions up to and including 6.4.3; 7.1.0, TIBCO JasperReports Server for ActiveMatrix BPM: versions up to and including 6.4.3, TIBCO Jaspersoft for AWS with Multi-Tenancy: versions up to and including 7.1.0, TIBCO Jaspersoft Reporting and Analytics for AWS: versions up to and including 7.1.0.

    Source: cvelistv5, CISA KEV Catalog, NVD (NIST), CVE.org (MITRE)

    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
    TIBCO Software Inc.TIBCO JasperReports Library
    • 7.2.0
    • 7.1.0
    • ≤ 6.3.4
    • 6.4.1
    • 6.4.2
    • 6.4.21
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    TIBCO Software Inc.TIBCO JasperReports Library Community Edition
    • ≤ 6.7.0
    • —
    TIBCO Software Inc.TIBCO JasperReports Library for ActiveMatrix BPM
    • ≤ 6.4.21
    • —
    TIBCO Software Inc.TIBCO JasperReports Server
    • 6.4.1
    • 6.4.2
    • ≤ 6.3.4
    • 7.1.0
    • 6.4.3
    • 6.4.0
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    TIBCO Software Inc.TIBCO JasperReports Server Community Edition
    • 7.1.0
    • ≤ 6.4.3
    • —
    • —
    TIBCO Software Inc.TIBCO JasperReports Server for ActiveMatrix BPM
    • ≤ 6.4.3
    • —
    TIBCO Software Inc.TIBCO Jaspersoft for AWS with Multi-Tenancy
    • ≤ 7.1.0
    • —
    TIBCO Software Inc.TIBCO Jaspersoft Reporting and Analytics for AWS
    • ≤ 7.1.0
    • —
    tibcojasperreports_library
    • ≤ 6.4.21
    • 7.2.0
    • ≤ 6.7.0
    • 7.1.0
    • —
    • —
    • —
    • —
    tibcojasperreports_server
    • 7.1.0
    • ≤ 6.4.3
    • —
    • —
    tibcojaspersoft
    • ≤ 7.1.0
    • —
    tibcojaspersoft_reporting_and_analytics
    • ≤ 7.1.0
    • —

    Vendors and products

    Weakness classes (CWE)

    • CWE-22Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal')

      Base

      The product uses external input to construct a pathname that is intended to identify a file or directory that is located underneath a restricted parent directory, but the product does not properly neutralize special elements within the pathname that can cause the pathname to resolve to a location that is outside of the restricted directory.

      Entry at MITRE CWE-22

    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
    Packet StormTibco JasperSoft Path Traversal (opens in a new tab)packetstormsecurity.comPoC (publicly reported)reported, not verified—

    References & sources

    • tibco.comservices/support/advisoriesx_refsource_MISC
    • tibco.comsupport/advisories/2019/03/tibco-security-advisory-march-6-2019…x_refsource_CONFIRM
    • securityfocus.com107351Vulnerability database, x_refsource_BID
    • seclists.org20190909 CVE-2018-18809 Path traversal in Tibco JasperSoftMailing list, x_refsource_FULLDISC
    • packetstormsecurity.comfiles/154406/Tibco-JasperSoft-Path-Traversal.htmlx_refsource_MISC
    • security.elarlang.eucve-2018-18809-path-traversal-in-tibco-jaspersoft.htmlx_refsource_MISC
    • cybersecurityworks.comzerodays/cve-2018-18809-tibco.htmlx_refsource_MISC
    • cisa.govknown-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2018-18809government-resource
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