What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-7961: Liferay Portal Deserialization of Untrusted Data Vulnerability

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: yes — in CISA KEV since 2021-11-03
• EPSS: 99.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2020-03-20 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-502

Description

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).

Affected products

• Liferay Portal: before 7.2.1 — fixed in 7.2.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Liferay Portal 7.2.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/157254/Liferay-Portal-Java-Unmarshalling-Remote-Code-Execution.html
• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/158392/Liferay-Portal-Remote-Code-Execution.html
• https://portal.liferay.dev/learn/security/known-vulnerabilities
• https://portal.liferay.dev/learn/security/known-vulnerabilities/-/asset_publisher/HbL5mxmVrnXW/content/id/117954271
• https://research.checkpoint.com/2021/freakout-leveraging-newest-vulnerabilities-for-creating-a-botnet/
• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/157254/Liferay-Portal-Java-Unmarshalling-Remote-Code-Execution.html
• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/158392/Liferay-Portal-Remote-Code-Execution.html
• https://portal.liferay.dev/learn/security/known-vulnerabilities
• https://portal.liferay.dev/learn/security/known-vulnerabilities/-/asset_publisher/HbL5mxmVrnXW/content/id/117954271
• https://research.checkpoint.com/2021/freakout-leveraging-newest-vulnerabilities-for-creating-a-botnet/
• https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2020-7961

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