CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2020-9480 — Apache Spark security vulnerability
In Apache Spark 2.4.5 and earlier, a standalone resource manager's master may be configured to require authentication (spark.authenticate) via a shared secret. When enabled, however, a specially-crafted RPC to the master can succeed in starting an application's resources on the Spark cluster, even without the shared key. This can be leveraged to execute shell commands on the host machine. This does not affect Spark clusters using other resource managers (YARN, Mesos, etc).
- Severity
- Critical
- CVSS
- 9.8 (3.1)
- Published
- 2020-06-23
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-306
Affected products
- apache / spark
- oracle / business_intelligence / 5.5.0.0.0
Matched remediation archetype
Authentication bypass and missing authentication
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
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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