CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2018-11770 — Apache Spark security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 4.9

From version 1.3.0 onward, Apache Spark's standalone master exposes a REST API for job submission, in addition to the submission mechanism used by spark-submit. In standalone, the config property 'spark.authenticate.secret' establishes a shared secret for authenticating requests to submit jobs via spark-submit. However, the REST API does not use this or any other authentication mechanism, and this is not adequately documented. In this case, a user would be able to run a driver program without authenticating, but not launch executors, using the REST API. This REST API is also used by Mesos, when set up to run in cluster mode (i.e., when also running MesosClusterDispatcher), for job submission. Future versions of Spark will improve documentation on these points, and prohibit setting 'spark.authenticate.secret' when running the REST APIs, to make this clear. Future versions will also disable the REST API by default in the standalone master by changing the default value of 'spark.master.rest.enabled' to 'false'.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
4.9 (2.0)
Published
2018-08-13
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-287

Affected products

  • apache / spark

Matched remediation archetype

Authentication bypass and missing authentication

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Check exposure

  • Map every affected endpoint and protocol path, including alternate ports, legacy routes, recovery flows, service accounts, and machine-to-machine access.
  • Confirm which deployments enable the affected authentication mode and whether the interface is reachable from untrusted networks.
  • Review session, token, credential, and proxy trust configuration without attempting account takeover.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and centralize fail-closed authentication before protected request handling.
  • Remove default or embedded credentials, rotate affected secrets and sessions, and bind authentication decisions to the intended audience and channel.
  • Add negative tests for alternate routes, malformed or absent credentials, recovery flows, and proxy-derived identity.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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