CVE-2021-40690Bypass of the secureValidation property
- 7.5HighCVSS base score
- 7.4%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 5.5% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
All versions of Apache Santuario - XML Security for Java prior to 2.2.3 and 2.1.7 are vulnerable to an issue where the "secureValidation" property is not passed correctly when creating a KeyInfo from a KeyInfoReference element. This allows an attacker to abuse an XPath Transform to extract any local .xml files in a RetrievalMethod element.
Timeline
ID reserved
By apache
- 11 days later
· 11 days later
Published
- 5 years later
· 5 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 7.4% · top 5.5% of all CVEs (15 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 7.5.
Affected products
Apache Software Foundation · Apache Santuario
- affected XML Security for Java – < 2.2.3,2.1.7
Affected packages
From reviewed advisories of the GitHub Advisory Database.
- Mavenorg.apache.santuario:xmlsecGHSA-j8wc-gxx9-82hx (opens in a new tab)
References
References14
- https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r8848751b6a5dd78cc9e99d627e74fecfaffdfa1bb615dce827aad633%40%3Cdev.santuario.apache.org%3E (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- [tomee-commits] 20210922 [tomee] 02/02: Update xmlsec to 2.2.3 to mitigate CVE-2021-40690 (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_transferred
- [tomee-commits] 20210923 [jira] [Resolved] (TOMEE-3798) TomEE (8.0.8) is affected by CVE-2021-40690 vulnerability (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_transferred
- [tomee-commits] 20210923 [jira] [Created] (TOMEE-3798) TomEE (8.0.8) is affected by CVE-2021-40690 vulnerability (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_transferred
- [tomee-commits] 20210923 [jira] [Assigned] (TOMEE-3798) TomEE (8.0.8) is affected by CVE-2021-40690 vulnerability (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_transferred
- [tomee-commits] 20210923 [jira] [Updated] (TOMEE-3798) TomEE (8.0.8) is affected by CVE-2021-40690 vulnerability (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_transferred
- [poi-user] 20210923 Re: CVE-2021-40690 on xmlsec jar (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_transferred
- [debian-lts-announce] 20210927 [SECURITY] [DLA 2767-1] libxml-security-java security update (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_transferred
- [cxf-issues] 20211027 [jira] [Created] (CXF-8613) High Security issues reported with Apache Santuario library bundled in CXF 3.4.4 (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_transferred
- [tomee-commits] 20211028 [jira] [Updated] (TOMEE-3798) TomEE (8.0.8) is affected by CVE-2021-40690 vulnerability (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_transferred
- DSA-5010 (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryx_transferred
- https://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/cpuapr2022.html (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/cpujul2022.html (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
- https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20230818-0002/ (opens in a new tab)x_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2021-2083 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-j8wc-gxx9-82hx (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2021-40690)Record last updated .