CVE-2025-46295

Step 1: Payload Delivery: An attacker identifies an application using Apache Commons Text and its text-substitution API, accepting user-controlled input.

Step 2: Malicious Input Injection: The attacker crafts a malicious string containing interpolation directives designed to exploit a vulnerable interpolator (e.g., script: or dns:).

Step 3: Interpolation Trigger: The application processes the attacker's input, triggering the interpolation process.

Step 4: Code Execution: The vulnerable interpolator executes the attacker's commands or accesses external resources as specified in the malicious input.

Step 5: System Compromise: The attacker gains control of the server, potentially leading to data exfiltration, further exploitation, or denial of service.

The vulnerability stems from the Apache Commons Text library's interpolation feature, specifically the use of potentially unsafe interpolators. When applications process untrusted input using this library, attackers can craft malicious strings that, when interpolated, trigger actions like command execution or external resource access. The root cause is a lack of proper input validation and sanitization of the input strings before they are processed by the interpolators. The library fails to adequately restrict the types of interpolators that can be used or the resources they can access, leading to the possibility of arbitrary code execution. The specific flaw lies in the design of the interpolation mechanism, which allows for the execution of arbitrary code based on the input string. This is not a buffer overflow or race condition but a logic flaw in the design of the interpolation feature.