CVE-2020-10721 — fabric8-maven-plugin
HIGHCVE-2020-10721 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) Deserialization of Untrusted Data vulnerability in io.fabric8:fabric8-maven-plugin. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
fabric8-maven-plugin: insecure way to construct Yaml Object leading to remote code execution
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2020-10721 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 379,145 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
io.fabric8:fabric8-maven-pluginReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Maven packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
A flaw was found in the fabric8-maven-plugin 4.0.0 and later. When using a wildfly-swarm or thorntail custom configuration, a malicious YAML configuration file on the local machine executing the maven plug-in could allow for deserialization of untrusted data resulting in arbitrary code execution. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data confidentiality and integrity as well as system availability.
The fabric8-maven-plugin has been superseded by the Eclipse project JKube and the recommendation is migrating users of the fabric8-maven-plugin to Eclipse Jkube >= 1.0.0
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | io.fabric8:fabric8-maven-plugin | ≥ 4.0.0-M1 | No fix |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for io.fabric8:fabric8-maven-plugin, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Remediation status
No patched version of io.fabric8:fabric8-maven-plugin has shipped for CVE-2020-10721 yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.
Mitigate without a patch
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2020-10721 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2020-10721. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2020-10721 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2020-10721 across Maven dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.