What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-35036: hibernate-validator insecure default Expression Language interpolation

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.3 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2025-06-03 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-94

Description

Hibernate Validator before 6.2.0 and 7.0.0, by default and depending how it is used, may interpolate user-supplied input in a constraint violation message with Expression Language. This could allow an attacker to access sensitive information or execute arbitrary Java code. Hibernate Validator as of 6.2.0 and 7.0.0 no longer interpolates custom constraint violation messages with Expression Language and strongly recommends not allowing user-supplied input in constraint violation messages. CVE-2020-5245 and CVE-2025-4428 are examples of related, downstream vulnerabilities involving Expression Language intepolation of user-supplied data.

Affected products

• Hibernate Validator: before 6.2.0 — fixed in 6.2.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Hibernate Validator 6.2.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/stable/validator/reference/en-US/html_single/#section-hibernateconstraintvalidatorcontext
• https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate-validator/commit/05f795bb7cf18856004f40e5042709e550ed0d6e
• https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate-validator/commit/254858d9dcc4e7cd775d1b0f47f482218077c5e1
• https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate-validator/commit/d2db40b9e7d22c7a0b44d7665242dfc7b4d14d78
• https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate-validator/commit/e076293b0ee1bfa97b6e67d05ad9eee1ad77e893
• https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate-validator/compare/6.1.7.Final...6.2.0.Final
• https://github.com/hibernate/hibernate-validator/pull/1138
• https://hibernate.atlassian.net/browse/HV-1816
• https://hibernate.org/validator/documentation/migration-guide/#6-2-0-cr1
• https://in.relation.to/2021/01/06/hibernate-validator-700-62-final-released/#expression-language
• https://labs.watchtowr.com/expression-payloads-meet-mayhem-cve-2025-4427-and-cve-2025-4428/
• https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-5245

Get alerted when CVE-2025-35036 or the next vulnerability affects your stack