It was found that in certain circumstances, Spring framework evaluated Expression Language (EL) expressions twice: once by the container, and once by the tag. A remote attacker could use this flaw to execute arbitrary code in the context of the application server, or to obtain sensitive information from the server, via a specially-crafted HTTP request. References: [1] http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/011713-java-spring-framework-265923.html [2] http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/30282/remote-code-vulnerability-in-spring-framework-for-java/
SpringSource security team has confirmed that this is NOT a new security flaw (other than original CVE-2011-2730 issue), but rather just a new exploit was published for the original CVE-2011-2730 issue demonstrating remote code execution was possible for the original flaw: [3] http://support.springsource.com/security/cve-2011-2730 From the "History" section of [3]: '2012-12-06: Updated advisory with finding by Dan Amodio that issue may lead to remote code execution' Also, the following independent article: [4] http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/The-ghost-of-a-Spring-Framework-bug-haunts-old-code-1786850.html clarifies the confusion (that might appear) due the newly published advisories [1], [2]. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 737608 ***