What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2015-6420: Insecure Deserialization in Apache Commons Collection

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 15.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2015-12-15 · updated 2026-10-07
• Weakness: CWE-502

Description

Serialized-object interfaces in certain Cisco Collaboration and Social Media; Endpoint Clients and Client Software; Network Application, Service, and Acceleration; Network and Content Security Devices; Network Management and Provisioning; Routing and Switching - Enterprise and Service Provider; Unified Computing; Voice and Unified Communications Devices; Video, Streaming, TelePresence, and Transcoding Devices; Wireless; and Cisco Hosted Services products allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands via a crafted serialized Java object, related to the Apache Commons Collections (ACC) library.

Affected products

• Apache Commons Collections: from 3.0 before 3.2.2; 4.0 — fixed in 3.2.2
• Maven Commons-Collections:Commons-Collections: before 3.2.2; 1.0, 2.0, 2.0.20020914.015953, 2.0.20020914.020746, 2.0.20020914.020858, 2.1 (+6) — fixed in 3.2.2
• Maven Net.Sourceforge.Collections:Collections-Generic: through 4.0.1
• Maven Org.Apache.Commons:Commons-Collections4: before 4.1; 4.0 — fixed in 4.1
• Maven Org.Apache.Servicemix.Bundles:Org.Apache.Servicemix.Bundles.Collections-Generic: through 4.01
• Maven Org.Apache.Servicemix.Bundles:Org.Apache.Servicemix.Bundles.Commons-Collections: through 3.2.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Apache Commons Collections 3.2.2; Maven Commons-Collections:Commons-Collections 3.2.2; Maven Org.Apache.Commons:Commons-Collections4 4.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20151209-java-deserialization
• http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/security-advisory/cpujul2018-4258247.html
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/78872
• https://h20566.www2.hpe.com/portal/site/hpsc/public/kb/docDisplay?docId=emr_na-c05376917
• https://h20566.www2.hpe.com/portal/site/hpsc/public/kb/docDisplay?docId=emr_na-c05390722
• https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r352e40ca9874d1beb4ad95403792adca7eb295e6bc3bd7b65fabcc21%40%3Ccommits.samza.apache.org%3E
• https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/581311
• https://www.tenable.com/security/research/tra-2017-14
• https://www.tenable.com/security/research/tra-2017-23
• http://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20151209-java-deserialization
• http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/security-advisory/cpujul2018-4258247.html
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/78872

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