CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-28754 — Apache Shardingsphere security vulnerability

High CVSS 8.8

Deserialization of Untrusted Data vulnerability in Apache ShardingSphere-Agent, which allows attackers to execute arbitrary code by constructing a special YAML configuration file. The attacker needs to have permission to modify the ShardingSphere Agent YAML configuration file on the target machine, and the target machine can access the URL with the arbitrary code JAR. An attacker can use SnakeYAML to deserialize java.net.URLClassLoader and make it load a JAR from a specified URL, and then deserialize javax.script.ScriptEngineManager to load code using that ClassLoader. When the ShardingSphere JVM process starts and uses the ShardingSphere-Agent, the arbitrary code specified by the attacker will be executed during the deserialization of the YAML configuration file by the Agent. This issue affects ShardingSphere-Agent: through 5.3.2. This vulnerability is fixed in Apache ShardingSphere 5.4.0.

Severity
High
CVSS
8.8 (3.1)
Published
2023-07-19
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
java/maven
Weaknesses
CWE-502

Affected products

  • apache / shardingsphere

Matched remediation archetype

Unsafe deserialization and object reconstruction

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Check exposure

  • Inventory serialization formats accepted from requests, queues, caches, files, cookies, and cross-service messages.
  • Trace whether untrusted input can select classes, types, callbacks, constructors, or object hooks during decoding.
  • Identify signing, schema validation, trust-boundary, and compatibility settings for each decoder.

Remediate safely

  • Replace native object deserialization with a data-only format and explicit schema validation.
  • If replacement is not immediate, use a safe decoder with a minimal type allowlist and disable polymorphic or executable hooks.
  • Update the affected library and add inert tests for unknown types, extra fields, malformed nesting, and unsigned data.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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