CVE-2018-1196: VMware Spring Boot

Medium severity, CVSS 5.9. EPSS: 1.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

Spring Boot supports an embedded launch script that can be used to easily run the application as a systemd or init.d linux service. The script included with Spring Boot 1.5.9 and earlier and 2.0.0.M1 through 2.0.0.M7 is susceptible to a symlink attack which allows the "run_user" to overwrite and take ownership of any file on the same system. In order to instigate the attack, the application must be installed as a service and the "run_user" requires shell access to the server. Spring Boot application that are not installed as a service, or are not using the embedded launch script are not susceptible.

Affected products

• VMware Spring Boot: up to and including 1.5.9; version 2.0.0 only

Published 2018-03-19. Last modified 2026-06-17.