CVE-2022-28981 — com.liferay.headless.disc…
HIGHCVE-2022-28981 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Path Traversal vulnerability in com.liferay:com.liferay.headless.discovery.web. A fix is available for com.liferay:com.liferay.headless.discovery.web — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Liferay Portal Path Traversal Vulnerability via the Hypermedia REST APIs Module
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-28981.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
com.liferay:com.liferay.headless.discovery.webReal-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
Path traversal vulnerability in the Hypermedia REST APIs module before 4.0.12 from Liferay Portal (7.4.0 through 7.4.2) allows remote attackers to access files outside of com.liferay.headless.discovery.web/META-INF/resources via the parameter parameter.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | com.liferay:com.liferay.headless.discovery.web | all versions | 4.0.12com.liferay:com.liferay.headless.discovery.web:4.0.12 |
Affected Products
liferay portalliferayDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for com.liferay:com.liferay.headless.discovery.web, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update com.liferay:com.liferay.headless.discovery.web to 4.0.12 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-28981 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Resolve every user-supplied path to its canonical form and reject anything that escapes the intended directory, and run the component under an account that has no read or write access outside the directory it legitimately serves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-28981 in your dependencies?
Find it across Maven, including transitive dependencies.