The Spring Security annotation detection mechanism may not correctly resolve annotations on methods within type hierarchies with a parameterized super type with unbounded generics. This can be an issue when using @PreAuthorize and other method security annotations, resulting in an authorization bypass.

Your application may be affected by this if you are using Spring Security's @EnableMethodSecurity feature.

You are not affected by this if you are not using @EnableMethodSecurity or if you do not use security annotations on methods in generic superclasses or generic interfaces.

This CVE is published in conjunction with CVE-2025-41249 https://spring.io/security/cve-2025-41249 .

Spring Security, versions 4.2.x up to 4.2.12, and older unsupported versions support plain text passwords using PlaintextPasswordEncoder. If an application using an affected version of Spring Security is leveraging PlaintextPasswordEncoder and a user has a null encoded password, a malicious user (or attacker) can authenticate using a password of "null".

External References:

https://pivotal.io/security/cve-2019-11272