Summary Remote Code Execution (RCE) is possible if an application uses certain GeoTools functionality to evaluate XPath expressions supplied by user input.
Details The following methods pass XPath expressions to the commons-jxpath library which can execute arbitrary code and would be a security issue if the XPath expressions are provided by user input.
org.geotools.appschema.util.XmlXpathUtilites.getXPathValues(NamespaceSupport, String, Document) org.geotools.appschema.util.XmlXpathUtilites.countXPathNodes(NamespaceSupport, String, Document) org.geotools.appschema.util.XmlXpathUtilites.getSingleXPathValue(NamespaceSupport, String, Document) org.geotools.data.complex.expression.FeaturePropertyAccessorFactory.FeaturePropertyAccessor.get(Object, String, Class<T>) org.geotools.data.complex.expression.FeaturePropertyAccessorFactory.FeaturePropertyAccessor.set(Object, String, Object, Class) org.geotools.data.complex.expression.MapPropertyAccessorFactory.new PropertyAccessor() {...}.get(Object, String, Class<T>) org.geotools.xsd.StreamingParser.StreamingParser(Configuration, InputStream, String)
PoC The following inputs to StreamingParser will delay the response by five seconds: new org.geotools.xsd.StreamingParser( new org.geotools.filter.v10.OGCConfiguration(), new java.io.ByteArrayInputStream("<Filter></Filter>".getBytes()), "java.lang.Thread.sleep(5000)") .parse();
Impact
This vulnerability can lead to executing arbitrary code.
Mitigation
GeoTools can operate with reduced functionality by removing the gt-complex jar from your application. As an example of the impact application schema datastore would not function without the ability to use XPath expressions to query complex content.
The SourceForge download page lists drop-in-replacement jars for GeoTools: 31.1, 30.3, 30.2, 29.2, 28.2, 27.5, 27.4, 26.7, 26.4, 25.2, 24.0. These jars are for download only and are not available from maven central, intended to quickly provide a fix to affected applications.
References https://github.com/geoserver/geoserver/security/advisories/GHSA-6jj6-gm7p-fcvv https://osgeo-org.atlassian.net/browse/GEOT-7587 https://github.com/geotools/geotools/pull/4797 https://github.com/Warxim/CVE-2022-41852?tab=readme-ov-file#workaround-for-cve-2022-41852
GeoTools is an open source Java library that provides tools for geospatial data. GeoTools includes support for OGC Filter expression language parsing, encoding and execution against a range of datastore. SQL Injection Vulnerabilities have been found when executing OGC Filters with JDBCDataStore implementations. Users are advised to upgrade to either version 27.4 or to 28.2 to resolve this issue. Users unable to upgrade may disable encode functions for PostGIS DataStores or enable prepared statements for JDBCDataStores as a partial mitigation.
GeoTools is an open source Java library that provides tools for geospatial data. The GeoTools library has a number of data sources that can perform unchecked JNDI lookups, which in turn can be used to perform class deserialization and result in arbitrary code execution. Similar to the Log4J case, the vulnerability can be triggered if the JNDI names are user-provided, but requires admin-level login to be triggered. The lookups are now restricted in GeoTools 26.4, GeoTools 25.6, and GeoTools 24.6. Users unable to upgrade should ensure that any downstream application should not allow usage of remotely provided JNDI strings.