CVE-2022-23612: Directory Traversal in OpenMRS Startup Filter

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2022-02-22 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-22

Description

OpenMRS is a patient-based medical record system focusing on giving providers a free customizable electronic medical record system. Affected versions are subject to arbitrary file exfiltration due to failure to sanitize request when satisfying GET requests for `/images` & `/initfilter/scripts`. This can allow an attacker to access any file on a system running OpenMRS that is accessible to the user id OpenMRS is running under. Affected implementations should update to the latest patch version of OpenMRS Core for the minor version they use. These are: 2.1.5, 2.2.1, 2.3.5, 2.4.5 and 2.5.3. As a general rule, this vulnerability is already mitigated by Tomcat's URL normalization in Tomcat 7.0.28+. Users on older versions of Tomcat should consider upgrading their Tomcat instance as well as their OpenMRS instance.

Affected products

OpenMRS: from 1.6 before 2.1.5; from 2.2.0 before 2.2.1; from 2.3.0 before 2.3.5; from 2.4.0 before 2.4.5; from 2.5.0 before 2.5.3 — fixed in 2.1.5, 2.2.1, 2.3.5, 2.4.5, 2.5.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: OpenMRS 2.1.5, 2.2.1, 2.3.5, 2.4.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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