What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2024-28253: SpEL Injection in `PUT /api/v1/policies` in OpenMetadata

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 12.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2024-03-15 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-94

Description

OpenMetadata is a unified platform for discovery, observability, and governance powered by a central metadata repository, in-depth lineage, and seamless team collaboration. `CompiledRule::validateExpression` is also called from `PolicyRepository.prepare`. `prepare()` is called from `EntityRepository.prepareInternal()` which, in turn, gets called from `EntityResource.createOrUpdate()`. Note that even though there is an authorization check (`authorizer.authorize()`), it gets called after `prepareInternal()` gets called and therefore after the SpEL expression has been evaluated. In order to reach this method, an attacker can send a PUT request to `/api/v1/policies` which gets handled by `PolicyResource.createOrUpdate()`. This vulnerability was discovered with the help of CodeQL's Expression language injection (Spring) query and is also tracked as `GHSL-2023-252`. This issue may lead to Remote Code Execution and has been addressed in version 1.3.1. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Affected products

• open-metadata OpenMetadata: before 1.3.1 — fixed in 1.3.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: open-metadata OpenMetadata 1.3.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://codeql.github.com/codeql-query-help/java/java-spel-expression-injection
• https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata/blob/b6b337e09a05101506a5faba4b45d370cc3c9fc8/openmetadata-service/src/main/java/org/openmetadata/service/jdbi3/EntityRepository.java#L693
• https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata/blob/b6b337e09a05101506a5faba4b45d370cc3c9fc8/openmetadata-service/src/main/java/org/openmetadata/service/resources/EntityResource.java#L219
• https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata/blob/b6b337e09a05101506a5faba4b45d370cc3c9fc8/openmetadata-service/src/main/java/org/openmetadata/service/resources/policies/PolicyResource.java#L365
• https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata/blob/main/openmetadata-service/src/main/java/org/openmetadata/service/jdbi3/PolicyRepository.java#L113
• https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata/security/advisories/GHSA-7vf4-x5m2-r6gr
• https://codeql.github.com/codeql-query-help/java/java-spel-expression-injection
• https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata/blob/b6b337e09a05101506a5faba4b45d370cc3c9fc8/openmetadata-service/src/main/java/org/openmetadata/service/jdbi3/EntityRepository.java#L693
• https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata/blob/b6b337e09a05101506a5faba4b45d370cc3c9fc8/openmetadata-service/src/main/java/org/openmetadata/service/resources/EntityResource.java#L219
• https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata/blob/b6b337e09a05101506a5faba4b45d370cc3c9fc8/openmetadata-service/src/main/java/org/openmetadata/service/resources/policies/PolicyResource.java#L365
• https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata/blob/main/openmetadata-service/src/main/java/org/openmetadata/service/jdbi3/PolicyRepository.java#L113
• https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata/security/advisories/GHSA-7vf4-x5m2-r6gr

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