Home/CVE/Liferay Portal Deserialization of Untrusted Data Vulnerability
CVE

CVE-2020-7961

Liferay Portal Deserialization of Untrusted Data Vulnerability

Deserialization of Untrusted Data in Liferay Portal prior to 7.2.1 CE GA2 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via JSON web services (JSONWS).

CRITICAL · CVSS 9.8 ⚠ CISA KEV EPSS 0.94352
Act now
  • Listed on CISA KEV (known exploited in the wild)
  • SSVC exploitation status: active
  • EPSS ≥ 0.50 - high probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
  • EPSS percentile: top 0% of all CVEs by exploitation likelihood
  • Public exploit or PoC is available
  • SSVC automatable: yes - attacks can be scripted at scale
  • CVSS base score ≥ 7.0
Sigma rules0 YARA rules0
⬢

Required Remediation

Apply updates per vendor instructions.

⬡

Weakness Classification

CWE-502Deserialization of Untrusted Data
CWE-502Deserialization of Untrusted Data
▤

Affected Products & Versions

1
liferay portal< 7.2.1
▤

Affected Packages

1
Language-ecosystem packages (from OSV) tied to this CVE, with the version that fixes it - the dependency-level detail NVD doesn’t carry.
Maven com.liferay.portal:com.liferay.portal.kernel CRITICAL fixed in 4.35.3
⚠

Public Exploits & PoCs

6
remoteLiferay Portal - Java Unmarshalling via JSONWS RCE (Metasploit)verified
nucleiLiferay Portal Unauthenticated < 7.2.1 CE GA2 - Remote Code Executioncritical
nucleiLiferay Login Panel - Detectinfo
pocpacketstormsecurity.com · Liferay-Portal-Java-Unmarshalling-Remote-Code-Execution.htmlpacketstormsecurity.com
pocpacketstormsecurity.com · Liferay-Portal-Remote-Code-Execution.htmlpacketstormsecurity.com
pocresearch.checkpoint.com · freakout-leveraging-newest-vulnerabilities-for-creating-a...research.checkpoint.com
◈

Detection Rules (IDS/IPS)

2
et-openET EXPLOIT 401TRG Liferay RCE (CVE-2020-7961)attempted-admin
et-openET WEB_SPECIFIC_APPS Liferay Unauthenticated RCE via JSONWS Inbound (CVE-2020-7961)attempted-admin
Open rulesets (ET Open, Snort Community, abuse.ch) link to source. Commercial rulesets are reference-only.
▣

Scoring & Timeline

9.8
CRITICAL · CVSS v3.1 · cve@mitre.org
View on NVD
Attack Vector
Network Adjacent Local Physical
Attack Complexity
Low High
Privileges Required
None Low High
User Interaction
None Required
Scope
Unchanged Changed
Confidentiality
None Low High
Integrity
None Low High
Availability
None Low High
Published to NVD20 Mar 2020 · 07:15 PM
CVSS VectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
SSVC triage · cisa-vulnrichment
Exploitation
active
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
total
SSVC asks the questions that actually drive patch urgency: is it being exploited, can attacks be automated, and how total is the impact.
⚑

Vendor Advisories

1
cisaKEV-CVE-2020-7961
🔗

References & Sources

3
Source URLs (vendor pages, mailing lists, write-ups). Exploit/PoC links are in their own section above to avoid duplication.
https://portal.liferay.dev/learn/security/known-vulnerabilitiesBroken LinkVendor Advisory
https://portal.liferay.dev/learn/security/known-vulnerabilities/-/asset_publisher/HbL5mxmVrnXW/content/id/117954271Broken LinkVendor Advisory
https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2020-7961US Government Resource
Intelligence Graph · click any node to traverse
CVETechnique ActorTool Family
drag to reposition · click any node to traverse · button top-right enlarges
External lookups - second-class, for what we don’t hold ourselves
NVDCVE.orgCISAVulnersExploit-DBGitHub PoCVulnCheck KEVGreyNoise
Vulnerabilities
CISA KEV catalog
CWE weaknesses
CAPEC attack patterns
Package vulnerabilities
Threat intelligence
Threat actors
Tools & malware
ATT&CK techniques
IOCs
Detection & defense
Sigma rules
YARA rules
Atomic Red Team tests
D3FEND countermeasures
Compliance
NIST 800-53
ISO 27001:2022
SOC 2 TSC
PCI-DSS v4.0
CIS Controls v8.1
About
All capabilities
Live statistics
Data sources
Privacy policy
Terms of service
threatengine.sh  ·  Open-source threat intelligence platform  ·  100+ authoritative sources  ·  Every fact traces to its origin