CVE-2024-36401: OSGeo GeoServer GeoTools Eval Injection Vulnerability

Critical severity, CVSS 9.8. Actively exploited: in CISA KEV since 2024-07-15. EPSS: 99.8% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

GeoServer is an open source server that allows users to share and edit geospatial data. Prior to versions 2.22.6, 2.23.6, 2.24.4, and 2.25.2, multiple OGC request parameters allow Remote Code Execution (RCE) by unauthenticated users through specially crafted input against a default GeoServer installation due to unsafely evaluating property names as XPath expressions. The GeoTools library API that GeoServer calls evaluates property/attribute names for feature types in a way that unsafely passes them to the commons-jxpath library which can execute arbitrary code when evaluating XPath expressions. This XPath evaluation is intended to be used only by complex feature types (i.e., Application Schema data stores) but is incorrectly being applied to simple feature types as well which makes this vulnerability apply to **ALL** GeoServer instances. No public PoC is provided but this vulnerability has been confirmed to be exploitable through WFS GetFeature, WFS GetPropertyValue, WMS GetMap, WMS GetFeatureInfo, WMS GetLegendGraphic and WPS Execute requests. This vulnerability can lead to executing arbitrary code. Versions 2.22.6, 2.23.6, 2.24.4, and 2.25.2 contain a patch for the issue. A workaround exists by removing the `gt-complex-x.y.jar` file from the GeoServer where `x.y` is the GeoTools version (e.g., `gt-complex-31.1.jar` if running GeoServer 2.25.1). This will remove the vulnerable code from GeoServer but may break some GeoServer functionality or prevent GeoServer from deploying if the gt-complex module is needed.

Affected products

  • GeoServer GeoServer: before 2.22.6 (fixed in 2.22.6); from 2.23.0, before 2.23.6 (fixed in 2.23.6); from 2.24.0, before 2.24.4 (fixed in 2.24.4); from 2.25.0, before 2.25.2 (fixed in 2.25.2)
  • Geotools Geotools: before 29.6 (fixed in 29.6); from 30.1, before 30.4 (fixed in 30.4); from 31.1, before 31.2 (fixed in 31.2); version 30.0 only; version 31.0 only

Published 2024-07-01. Last modified 2026-06-17.