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CVE-2021-36163: Unsafe deserialization in providers using the Hessian protocol

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 3.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2021-09-07 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-502

Description

In Apache Dubbo, users may choose to use the Hessian protocol. The Hessian protocol is implemented on top of HTTP and passes the body of a POST request directly to a HessianSkeleton: New HessianSkeleton are created without any configuration of the serialization factory and therefore without applying the dubbo properties for applying allowed or blocked type lists. In addition, the generic service is always exposed and therefore attackers do not need to figure out a valid service/method name pair. This is fixed in 2.7.13, 2.6.10.1

Affected products

• Apache Software Foundation Apache Dubbo: from 2.7.0 through 2.7.12; from 3.0.0 through 3.0.1

References

• https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r8d0adc057bb15a37199502cc366f4b1164c9c536ce28e4defdb428c0%40%3Cdev.dubbo.apache.org%3E
• https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r8d0adc057bb15a37199502cc366f4b1164c9c536ce28e4defdb428c0%40%3Cdev.dubbo.apache.org%3E

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