Overview
CVE-2025-12383 identifies a significant security vulnerability affecting Eclipse Jersey versions 2.45, 3.0.16, and 3.1.9. This vulnerability stems from a race condition that can potentially cause the application to ignore critical SSL configurations. This includes essential settings like mutual authentication, custom key/trust stores, and other security-related parameters. While the issue might manifest as an SSLHandshakeException under normal circumstances, specific conditions could lead to the application incorrectly trusting insecure servers, creating a significant security risk.
Technical Details
The root cause of this vulnerability is a race condition within the SSL context initialization process of Eclipse Jersey. When multiple threads attempt to access or modify the SSL configuration concurrently, a race occurs. This race can lead to certain SSL settings being overwritten or skipped entirely, resulting in a misconfigured SSL context. Specifically, configurations related to client authentication (mutual authentication), custom trust stores (used to validate server certificates), and custom key stores (used to present client certificates) are vulnerable. The Eclipse Security CVE Assignment issue contains more information on the reported issue, including a potential Proof of Concept (PoC).
CVSS Analysis
Currently, a CVSS score and severity rating have not been assigned to CVE-2025-12383 (N/A). However, the potential impact suggests a moderate to high severity rating should be anticipated. The lack of proper SSL configuration could leave applications vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks and other security breaches. An official CVSS score will provide more clarity once available.
Possible Impact
The impact of this vulnerability can be significant:
- Unauthorized Trust: The application might establish secure connections with malicious servers, believing them to be legitimate.
- Data Breach: Sensitive data transmitted over supposedly secure connections could be intercepted and compromised.
- Man-in-the-Middle Attacks: Attackers could intercept and manipulate traffic between the application and legitimate servers.
- Authentication Bypass: Mutual authentication failures could allow unauthorized access to resources.
Mitigation and Patch Steps
To mitigate this vulnerability, the following steps are recommended:
- Upgrade Jersey: Upgrade to a patched version of Eclipse Jersey as soon as it becomes available. Check the official Eclipse Jersey website for updates.
- Workaround (if no patch is available): Implement thread-safe SSL context initialization to prevent the race condition. This may involve using synchronization mechanisms (e.g., locks) to ensure exclusive access to the SSL configuration during initialization. This approach requires a deep understanding of the Jersey codebase and SSL/TLS protocols and should only be undertaken by experienced developers. Caution: Implementing a workaround is complex and might introduce new security issues. Test thoroughly.
- Monitor for Anomalies: Continuously monitor application logs for
SSLHandshakeExceptionerrors or other unusual SSL-related activity. - Review SSL Configuration: Carefully review and validate your existing SSL configurations to ensure they are correctly applied.
References
