Both Spring Security 3.2.x, 4.0.x, 4.1.0 and the Spring Framework 3.2.x, 4.0.x, 4.1.x, 4.2.x rely on URL pattern mappings for authorization and for mapping requests to controllers respectively. Differences in the strictness of the pattern matching mechanisms, for example with regards to space trimming in path segments, can lead Spring Security to not recognize certain paths as not protected that are in fact mapped to Spring MVC controllers that should be protected. The problem is compounded by the fact that the Spring Framework provides richer features with regards to pattern matching as well as by the fact that pattern matching in each Spring Security and the Spring Framework can easily be customized creating additional differences.

Pivotal Spring Framework before 3.2.14 and 4.x before 4.1.7 do not properly process inline DTD declarations when DTD is not entirely disabled, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption and out-of-memory errors) via a crafted XML file.

The Java SockJS client in Pivotal Spring Framework 4.1.x before 4.1.5 generates predictable session ids, which allows remote attackers to send messages to other sessions via unspecified vectors.

Directory traversal vulnerability in Pivotal Spring Framework 3.0.4 through 3.2.x before 3.2.12, 4.0.x before 4.0.8, and 4.1.x before 4.1.2 allows remote attackers to read arbitrary files via unspecified vectors, related to static resource handling.