Security advisory
In Karaf, JMX authentication takes place using JAAS and authorization takes place using ACL files. By default, only an "admin" can actually invoke on an MBean. However there is a vulnerability there for someone who is not an admin, but has a "viewer" role. In the 'etc/jmx.acl.cfg', such as role can call get*. It's possible to authenticate as a viewer role + invokes on the MLet getMBeansFromURL method, which goes off to a remote server to fetch the desired MBean, which is then registered in Karaf. At this point the attack fails as "viewer" doesn't have the permission to invoke on the MBean. Still, it could act as a SSRF style attack and also it essentially allows a "viewer" role to pollute the MBean registry, which is a kind of privilege escalation. The vulnerability is low as it's possible to add a ACL to limit access. Users should update to Apache Karaf 4.2.9 or newer.
- Products
- Not specified
- Affected versions
- Not specified
- Fixed versions
- Not specified
- CVEs
- CVE-2020-11980
- Confirmed fixed CVEs
- Not specified
- Updated in this feed
- 1 Nov 2026, 04:43 UTC · Revision 1
Source evidence
In Karaf, JMX authentication takes place using JAAS and authorization takes place using ACL files. By default, only an "admin" can actually invoke on an MBean. However there is a vulnerability there for someone who is not an admin, but has a "viewer" role. In the 'etc/jmx.acl.cfg', such as role can call get*. It's possible to authenticate as a viewer role + invokes on the MLet getMBeansFromURL method, which goes off to a remote server to fetch the desired MBean, which is then registered in Karaf. At this point the attack fails as "viewer" doesn't have the permission to invoke on the MBean. Still, it could act as a SSRF style attack and also it essentially allows a "viewer" role to pollute the MBean registry, which is a kind of privilege escalation. The vulnerability is low as it's possible to add a ACL to limit access. Users should update to Apache Karaf 4.2.9 or newer.
osv:CVE-2020-11980
Complete source record
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"id": "9855b87db3480221ae261318e4f8659912c58defbdd6fa0fc34fa6f80c932e27",
"url": "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2020-11980",
"method": "structured",
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"title": "CVE-2020-11980",
"summary": "In Karaf, JMX authentication takes place using JAAS and authorization takes place using ACL files. By default, only an \"admin\" can actually invoke on an MBean. However there is a vulnerability there for someone who is not an admin, but has a \"viewer\" role. In the 'etc/jmx.acl.cfg', such as role can call get*. It's possible to authenticate as a viewer role + invokes on the MLet getMBeansFromURL method, which goes off to a remote server to fetch the desired MBean, which is then registered in Karaf. At this point the attack fails as \"viewer\" doesn't have the permission to invoke on the MBean. Still, it could act as a SSRF style attack and also it essentially allows a \"viewer\" role to pollute the MBean registry, which is a kind of privilege escalation. The vulnerability is low as it's possible to add a ACL to limit access. Users should update to Apache Karaf 4.2.9 or newer.",
"evidence": "osv:CVE-2020-11980",
"products": [],
"severity": "medium",
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"metrics": [
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"affected": [
{
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"repo": "https://github.com/apache/karaf",
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"database_specific": {
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],
"modified": "2026-10-24T10:30:21.722063599Z",
"provider": "osv",
"references": [],
"provider_metadata": {}
},
"related_cves": [
{
"value": "CVE-2020-11980",
"evidence": "/id"
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"security_relevant": true,
"severity_evidence": "/severity/0/score"
},
"source_id": "core-osv",
"document_id": 430541,
"published_at": "2020-06-12T22:15:11.473+00:00"
}