A Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability affected the Apache Axis 1.4 distribution that was last released in 2006. Security and bug commits commits continue in the projects Axis 1.x Subversion repository, legacy users are encouraged to build from source. The successor to Axis 1.x is Axis2, the latest version is 1.7.9 and is not vulnerable to this issue.

Apache Axis 1.x up to and including 1.4 is vulnerable to a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack in the default servlet/services.

Apache Axis 1.4 and earlier, as used in PayPal Payments Pro, PayPal Mass Pay, PayPal Transactional Information SOAP, the Java Message Service implementation in Apache ActiveMQ, and other products, does not verify that the server hostname matches a domain name in the subject's Common Name (CN) or subjectAltName field of the X.509 certificate, which allows man-in-the-middle attackers to spoof SSL servers via an arbitrary valid certificate.

Apache Axis and Axis2 could allow a remote attacker to conduct spoofing attacks, caused by and incomplete fix related to the failure to verify that the server hostname matches a domain name in the subject's Common Name (CN) field of the X.509 certificate. By persuading a victim to visit a Web site containing a specially-crafted certificate, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability using man-in-the-middle techniques to spoof an SSL server.