Junglewise Threat Intelligence

CVE-2010-5327: Liferay Portal remote code execution via Velocity template

CVE-2010-5327 · Severity: high · CVSS 8.8 · Published 2017-01-13

Technologies: Liferay Portal. Vendors: Liferay, Maven.

Executive brief

Liferay Portal, a widely used enterprise content management and web portal platform, is vulnerable to a security flaw that allows authenticated users to execute unauthorized commands on the underlying server. By submitting a specially crafted Velocity template, an attacker can gain full control over the system, potentially leading to data theft, service disruption, or further network intrusion. This issue affects versions up to 6.2.10 and requires immediate patching to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive corporate infrastructure.

Technical details

A Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability exists in Liferay Portal through version 6.2.10 due to insufficient sandboxing of the Velocity template engine. The root cause is a failure in permissions and access controls (CWE-264) that allows authenticated users with template-editing privileges to bypass restricted contexts and invoke arbitrary Java classes or shell commands. An attacker with network access and low-level authentication can submit a malicious Velocity template to achieve full system compromise. The vulnerability was addressed in later versions by introducing plugin-specific context execution and improved classloading controls to restrict template access to sensitive packages.

Affected products

  • Liferay Liferay Portal through 6.2.10

Timeline

  • 2010-05-12: disclosed: Initial vulnerability identification (approximate based on CVE year)
  • 2012-06-14: patched: Fix committed to Liferay Portal GitHub repository
  • 2017-01-13: advisory: NVD publication date

References

Related threats