Apache Dubbo prior to 2.6.9 and 2.7.9 by default supports generic calls to arbitrary methods exposed by provider interfaces. These invocations are handled by the GenericFilter which will find the service and method specified in the first arguments of the invocation and use the Java Reflection API to make the final call. The signature for the $invoke or $invokeAsync methods is Ljava/lang/String;[Ljava/lang/String;[Ljava/lang/Object; where the first argument is the name of the method to invoke, the second one is an array with the parameter types for the method being invoked and the third one is an array with the actual call arguments. In addition, the caller also needs to set an RPC attachment specifying that the call is a generic call and how to decode the arguments. The possible values are: - true - raw.return - nativejava - bean - protobuf-json An attacker can control this RPC attachment and set it to nativejava to force the java deserialization of the byte array located in the third argument.

Each Apache Dubbo server will set a serialization id to tell the clients which serialization protocol it is working on. But for Dubbo versions before 2.7.8 or 2.6.9, an attacker can choose which serialization id the Provider will use by tampering with the byte preamble flags, aka, not following the server's instruction. This means that if a weak deserializer such as the Kryo and FST are somehow in code scope (e.g. if Kryo is somehow a part of a dependency), a remote unauthenticated attacker can tell the Provider to use the weak deserializer, and then proceed to exploit it.

Apache Dubbo prior to 2.6.9 and 2.7.9 supports Script routing which will enable a customer to route the request to the right server. These rules are used by the customers when making a request in order to find the right endpoint. When parsing these rules, Dubbo customers use ScriptEngine and run the rule provided by the script which by default may enable executing arbitrary code.

Unsafe deserialization occurs within a Dubbo application which has HTTP remoting enabled. An attacker may submit a POST request with a Java object in it to completely compromise a Provider instance of Apache Dubbo, if this instance enables HTTP. This issue affected Apache Dubbo 2.7.0 to 2.7.4, 2.6.0 to 2.6.7, and all 2.5.x versions.