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Vulnerabilities/CVE-2016-4437
Vulnerability dossier

CVE-2016-4437

Apache Shiro Remember Me Deserialization Remote Code Execution

VendorapachePublishedJun 7, 2016SourceNVDWeaknessCWE-321
Act now

Actively exploited in the wild. Patch or mitigate immediately — don't wait for a maintenance window.

⚙ WeaponizedMetasploit module availableopen ↗PoCPublic exploit on Exploit-DB#48410 ↗
Severity
Critical · 9.8
CVSS base score
Exploitation
In the wild
CISA KEV · Metasploit · Exploit-DB
Predicted risk
93% model
EPSS forecast — overtaken by confirmed exploitation
Exposure
Internet-facing
Exploitable remotely, no login, no user action
01

What's the risk?

An unauthenticated attacker, remotely over the network, with no user interaction, can fully compromise the system — steal data, tamper with it and take it offline.

Apache Shiro before 1.2.5, when a cipher key has not been configured for the "remember me" feature, allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or bypass intended access restrictions via an unspecified request parameter.

How it's exploitedMITRE ATT&CK · 2 observed in the wild
Initial Access
T1190Exploit Public-Facing Applicationobserved
Execution
T1059Command and Scripting Interpreterobserved

Techniques marked “observed” are corroborated by threat intelligence; the rest are inferred from the weakness type (CWE) and attack vector.

02

Who's exploiting it?

Corroborated threat activity referencing this CVE — with source and confidence, not inference.

Confirmed exploited in the wild. CISA KEV · catalogued Nov 3, 2021
Observed techniques MITRE-analysed · CTID Mappings Explorer
T1059
Command and Scripting Interpreter
observed
T1190Exploit Public-Facing Applicationobserved

These techniques were analysed against this CVE's real-world exploitation — the matching entries in the ATT&CK chain above are marked “observed”.

03

Are we affected?

4
  • Affectedapache · auroraall versions
  • Affectedapache · shiroall versions
  • Affectedredhat · fuse1.0
  • Affectedredhat · jboss_middleware_text-only_advisories1.0
04

What to do

Generated by Wavense from the CVE record — an immediate mitigation and the permanent fix.

  1. !

    Mitigate now

    Immediately ensure a strong, unique cipher key is explicitly configured for the Apache Shiro "remember me" feature, as described in Shiro documentation. If the feature is not critical, disable "remember me" functionality entirely to eliminate this attack vector. Additionally, implement strict network segmentation and monitor application logs for suspicious activity indicative of exploitation.

  2. ✓

    Permanent fix

    The permanent resolution is to upgrade Apache Shiro to version 1.2.5 or later immediately. All versions prior to 1.2.5 are affected by this vulnerability. Ensure all dependencies are updated and thoroughly test the application after the upgrade.

Technical details— weakness, CVSS vector & calculator, related CVEs

Business impact

An unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code on the server running Apache Shiro, or bypass authentication and access controls. This allows for complete compromise of the application and underlying system, leading to data exfiltration, service disruption, and significant business reputational damage.

Weakness

1
CWE-321Common Weakness Enumeration · MITRE definition

CVSS 3.1 details

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
0.0
/ 10.0 base
Critical severity
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Exploitability metrics
Attack VectorAV
Remotely exploitable across a network
Attack ComplexityAC
No special conditions required
Privileges RequiredPR
No authorization needed
User InteractionUI
No user participation needed
Impact metrics
ScopeS
Impact confined to the vulnerable component
ConfidentialityC
Total loss of confidentiality
IntegrityI
Total loss of integrity
AvailabilityA
Total loss of availability

Related vulnerabilities

Other CVEs affecting aurora

NVD
9.8Critical
CVE-2015-1427KEV⚙ WeaponizedExploit likely

The Groovy scripting engine in Elasticsearch before 1.3.8 and 1.4.x before 1.4.3 allows remote attackers to bypass the sandbox protection mechanism and execute arbitrary shell commands via a crafted script.

elasticNetworkLow effortNo authNo interactionCIA
2015-02-17
NVD
9.8Critical
CVE-2017-5645Exploit likely

In Apache Log4j 2.x before 2.8.2, when using the TCP socket server or UDP socket server to receive serialized log events from another application, a specially crafted binary payload can be sent that, when deserialized, can execute arbitrary code.

oracleCWE-502Deserialization of Untrusted DataNetworkLow effortNo authNo interactionCIA
2017-04-17
NVD
9.6Critical
CVE-2025-12543

A flaw was found in the Undertow HTTP server core, which is used in WildFly, JBoss EAP, and other Java applications. The Undertow library fails to properly validate the Host header in incoming HTTP requests.As a result, requests containing malformed or malicious Host headers are processed without rejection, enabling attackers to poison caches, perform internal network scans, or hijack user sessions.

redhatCWE-20Improper Input ValidationNetworkLow effortNo authUser neededCIA
2026-01-07
NVD
8.8High
CVE-2026-49268

A remote attacker can inject LDAP special characters into the Distinguished Name (DN) construction in DefaultLdapRealm class. User-supplied username input is directly concatenated into the LDAP DN template without any escaping of RFC 2253 special characters. This allows an attacker to manipulate the DN structure used for LDAP bind authentication, potentially bypassing authentication or impersonating other users. This issue affects all Apache Shiro versions through 2.2.0, and 3.0.0-alpha-1 when using DefaultLdapRealm Upgrade to Apache Shiro 2.2.1 or 3.0.0-alpha-2 or later, which fixes the issue.

apacheCWE-90LDAP InjectionNetworkLow effortNo authNo interactionCIA
2026-06-17
NVD
8.7High
CVE-2026-28369

A flaw was found in Undertow. When Undertow receives an HTTP request where the first header line starts with one or more spaces, it incorrectly processes the request by stripping these leading spaces. This behavior, which violates HTTP standards, can be exploited by a remote attacker to perform request smuggling. Request smuggling allows an attacker to bypass security mechanisms, access restricted information, or manipulate web caches, potentially leading to unauthorized actions or data exposure.

redhatCWE-444HTTP Request SmugglingNetworkHigh effortNo authNo interactionCIA
2026-03-27
NVD
8.7High
CVE-2026-28368

A flaw was found in Undertow. This vulnerability allows a remote attacker to construct specially crafted requests where header names are parsed differently by Undertow compared to upstream proxies. This discrepancy in header interpretation can be exploited to launch request smuggling attacks, potentially bypassing security controls and accessing unauthorized resources.

redhatCWE-444HTTP Request SmugglingNetworkHigh effortNo authNo interactionCIA
2026-03-27
NVD
8.7High
CVE-2026-28367

A flaw was found in Undertow. A remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability by sending `\r\r\r` as a header block terminator. This can be used for request smuggling with certain proxy servers, such as older versions of Apache Traffic Server and Google Cloud Classic Application Load Balancer, potentially leading to unauthorized access or manipulation of web requests.

redhatCWE-444HTTP Request SmugglingNetworkHigh effortNo authNo interactionCIA
2026-03-27
NVD
8.1High
CVE-2026-41731

JsonKafkaHeaderMapper and the deprecated DefaultKafkaHeaderMapper matched type headers against trusted packages using a prefix check, meaning that trusting any package implicitly trusted all of its subpackages. Combined with Jackson's default bean deserialization, a producer could supply crafted header values that caused the consumer to deserialize arbitrary JDK types. Affected versions: Spring for Apache Kafka 4.0.0 through 4.0.5; 3.3.0 through 3.3.15; 3.2.0 through 3.2.13; 2.9.0 through 2.9.13; 2.8.0 through 2.8.11.

vmwareCWE-502Deserialization of Untrusted DataNetworkHigh effortNo authNo interactionCIA
2026-06-10
0.0
/ 10.0 base
Critical severity
Key facts
CVE ID
CVE-2016-4437
Published
Jun 7, 2016
Last modified
Apr 22, 2026
CVSS
9.8 (v3.1)
EPSS
93.04%
In CISA KEV
Yes
Confidence
100/100
Weakness
CWE-321
Timeline
  1. Jun 7, 2016Published to NVDNVD
  2. Apr 22, 2026Record last modifiedNVD
  3. Oct 4, 2026AI analysis generatedWavense
View on NVD