CVE-2025-27553 — commons-vfs2
HIGHCVE-2025-27553 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-23 vulnerability in org.apache.commons:commons-vfs2. A fix is available for org.apache.commons:commons-vfs2 — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Apache Commons VFS Has Relative Path Traversal Vulnerability
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-2025-27553.
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-2025-27553 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 377,636 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
org.apache.commons:commons-vfs2Real-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
Relative Path Traversal vulnerability in Apache Commons VFS before 2.10.0.
The FileObject API in Commons VFS has a 'resolveFile' method that takes a 'scope' parameter. Specifying 'NameScope.DESCENDENT' promises that "an exception is thrown if the resolved file is not a descendent of the base file". However, when the path contains encoded ".." characters (for example, "%2E%2E/bar.txt"), it might return file objects that are not a descendent of the base file, without throwing an exception. This issue affects Apache Commons VFS: before 2.10.0.
Users are recommended to upgrade to version 2.10.0, which fixes the issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | org.apache.commons:commons-vfs2 | all versions | 2.10.0org.apache.commons:commons-vfs2:2.10.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for org.apache.commons:commons-vfs2, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update org.apache.commons:commons-vfs2 to 2.10.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2025-27553 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
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-2025-27553 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2025-27553. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extended Lifecycle Support | apache-commons-vfs-0:2.0-11.el7_9.1 | RHSA-2025:10548 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2025-27553 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2025-27553 across Maven dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.