U.S. flag   An official website of the United States government
Dot gov

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Https

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (Dot gov) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

CVE-2025-68161 Detail

Description

The Socket Appender in Apache Log4j Core versions 2.0-beta9 through 2.25.2 does not perform TLS hostname verification of the peer certificate, even when the verifyHostName https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/manual/appenders/network.html#SslConfiguration-attr-verifyHostName configuration attribute or the log4j2.sslVerifyHostName https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/manual/systemproperties.html#log4j2.sslVerifyHostName system property is set to true. This issue may allow a man-in-the-middle attacker to intercept or redirect log traffic under the following conditions: * The attacker is able to intercept or redirect network traffic between the client and the log receiver. * The attacker can present a server certificate issued by a certification authority trusted by the Socket Appender’s configured trust store (or by the default Java trust store if no custom trust store is configured). Users are advised to upgrade to Apache Log4j Core version 2.25.3, which addresses this issue. As an alternative mitigation, the Socket Appender may be configured to use a private or restricted trust root to limit the set of trusted certificates.


Metrics

NVD enrichment efforts reference publicly available information to associate vector strings. CVSS information contributed by other sources is also displayed.
CVSS 4.0 Severity and Vector Strings:

NIST CVSS score
NIST: NVD
N/A
NVD assessment not yet provided.

Nist CVSS score does not match with CNA score
CNA:  Apache Software Foundation
CVSS-B 6.3 MEDIUM
Vector:  CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools

By selecting these links, you will be leaving NIST webspace. We have provided these links to other web sites because they may have information that would be of interest to you. No inferences should be drawn on account of other sites being referenced, or not, from this page. There may be other web sites that are more appropriate for your purpose. NIST does not necessarily endorse the views expressed, or concur with the facts presented on these sites. Further, NIST does not endorse any commercial products that may be mentioned on these sites. Please address comments about this page to [email protected].

URL Source(s) Tag(s)
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/12/18/1 CVE
https://github.com/apache/logging-log4j2/pull/4002 Apache Software Foundation
https://lists.apache.org/thread/xr33kyxq3sl67lwb61ggvm1fzc8k7dvx Apache Software Foundation
https://logging.apache.org/cyclonedx/vdr.xml Apache Software Foundation
https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/manual/appenders/network.html#SslConfiguration-attr-verifyHostName Apache Software Foundation
https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/manual/systemproperties.html#log4j2.sslVerifyHostName Apache Software Foundation
https://logging.apache.org/security.html#CVE-2025-68161 Apache Software Foundation

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-ID CWE Name Source
CWE-297 Improper Validation of Certificate with Host Mismatch Apache Software Foundation  

Change History

2 change records found show changes

Quick Info

CVE Dictionary Entry:
CVE-2025-68161
NVD Published Date:
12/18/2025
NVD Last Modified:
12/18/2025
Source:
Apache Software Foundation