Privilege escalation in Apache Cassandra 5.0 on an mTLS environment using MutualTlsAuthenticator allows a user with only CREATE permission to associate their own certificate identity with an arbitrary role, including a superuser role, and authenticate as that role via ADD IDENTITY.

Users are recommended to upgrade to version 5.0.7+, which fixes this issue.

Summary / Details Systems running the Instaclustr fork of Stratio's Cassandra-Lucene-Index plugin versions 4.0-rc1-1.0.0 through 4.0.16-1.0.0 and 4.1.0-1.0.0 through 4.1.8-1.0.0, installed into Apache Cassandra version 4.x, are susceptible to a vulnerability which when successfully exploited could allow authenticated Cassandra users to remotely bypass RBAC to access data and and escalate their privileges.

Affected Versions - Cassandra-Lucene-Index plugin versions 4.0-rc1-1.0.0 through 4.0.16-1.0.0 - versions 4.1.0-1.0.0 through 4.1.8-1.0.0 when installed into Apache Cassandra version 4.x.

Required Configuration for Exploit These are the conditions required to enable exploit: 1. Cassandra 4.x 2. Vulnerable version of the Cassandra-Lucene-Index plugin configured for use 3. Data added to tables 4. Lucene index created 5. Cassandra flush has run

Mitigation/Prevention Mitigation requires dropping all Lucene indexes and stopping use of the plugin. Exploit will be possible any time the required conditions are met.

Solution Upgrade to a fixed version of the Cassandra-Lucene-Index plugin. Review users in Cassandra to validate all superuser privileges.

Privilege Defined With Unsafe Actions vulnerability in Apache Cassandra. An user with MODIFY permission ON ALL KEYSPACES can escalate privileges to superuser within a targeted Cassandra cluster via unsafe actions to a system resource. Operators granting data MODIFY permission on all keyspaces on affected versions should review data access rules for potential breaches.

This issue affects Apache Cassandra 3.0.30, 3.11.17, 4.0.16, 4.1.7, 5.0.2, but this advisory is only for 4.0.16 because the fix to CVE-2025-23015 was incorrectly applied to 4.0.16, so that version is still affected.

Users in the 4.0 series are recommended to upgrade to version 4.0.17 which fixes the issue. Users from 3.0, 3.11, 4.1 and 5.0 series should follow recommendation from CVE-2025-23015.

Privilege Defined With Unsafe Actions vulnerability in Apache Cassandra. An user with MODIFY permission ON ALL KEYSPACES can escalate privileges to superuser within a targeted Cassandra cluster via unsafe actions to a system resource. Operators granting data MODIFY permission on all keyspaces on affected versions should review data access rules for potential breaches.

This issue affects Apache Cassandra through 3.0.30, 3.11.17, 4.0.15, 4.1.7, 5.0.2.

Users are recommended to upgrade to versions 3.0.31, 3.11.18, 4.0.16, 4.1.8, 5.0.3, which fixes the issue.

Privilege escalation when enabling FQL/Audit logs allows user with JMX access to run arbitrary commands as the user running Apache Cassandra This issue affects Apache Cassandra: from 4.0.0 through 4.0.9, from 4.1.0 through 4.1.1.

WORKAROUND The vulnerability requires nodetool/JMX access to be exploitable, disable access for any non-trusted users.

MITIGATION Upgrade to 4.0.10 or 4.1.2 and leave the new FQL/Auditlog configuration property allownodetoolarchivecommand as false.

Apache Cassandra versions 2.1.0 to 2.1.22, 2.2.0 to 2.2.19, 3.0.0 to 3.0.23, and 3.11.0 to 3.11.9, when using 'dc' or 'rack' internodeencryption setting, allows both encrypted and unencrypted internode connections. A misconfigured node or a malicious user can use the unencrypted connection despite not being in the same rack or dc, and bypass mutual TLS requirement.

Due to a bug in handling return code from openssl native calls, the SslHandler that uses OpenSslEngine can end up in an infinite loop and eat up all CPU cycles, which may lead to DoS of the system.

This can only happen if the server has renegotiation enabled (which is set as default). Only systems using SslProvider.OpenSsl are affected, that will be true if netty-tcnative is in the classpath and openssl is installed.

If netty-tcnative is linked against boringssl, the problem does not exist, since renegotiation is not supported in boringssl.

Versions affected: Netty 4.0.0.Final - 4.0.36.Final and 4.1.0.Final

Workaround:

Users can use -Djdk.tls.rejectClientInitiatedRenegotiation=true to disable renegotiation and avoid this issue.

The default configuration in Apache Cassandra 1.2.0 through 1.2.19, 2.0.0 through 2.0.13, and 2.1.0 through 2.1.3 binds an unauthenticated JMX/RMI interface to all network interfaces, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary Java code via an RMI request.