CVE-2025-22234

1. Affected product: Spring Security
2. Affected packages: spring-security-crypto
   spring-security-core
3. Affected versions:
   • 5.7.16 only
   • 5.8.16.tuxcare only
   • 5.8.16.tuxcare.1 only
   • 5.8.16.tuxcare.2 only
   • 5.8.18 only
   • 6.0.16 only
   • 6.1.14 only
   • 6.2.10 only
   • 6.3.8 only
   • 6.4.4 only
4. GitHub repository:
   • https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-security
5. Published packages:
   • https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.springframework.security/spring-security-crypto
   • https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.springframework.security/spring-security-core
6. Fixed In:ELS for Spring Security v5.8.16.TuxCare.3

Vulnerability Info

This flaw stems from an error introduced in the BCryptPasswordEncoder as a consequence of a patch for CVE-2025-22228. This change inadvertently disrupted the timing attack mitigation previously present in DaoAuthenticationProvider. As a result, a remote attacker can identify by type of exception or different time response whether this username is present or not. This is known as user enumeration — the attacker can build a list of valid usernames.

Once attacker has real usernames, can:

• Perform brute-force attacks
• Launch phishing campaigns
• Exploit password reset or account recovery features

1. Set up a vulnerable version of Spring Security.
2. Configure authentication to use DaoAuthenticationProvider with the BCryptPasswordEncoder.
3. Validate timing consistency with password <72 in length.
4. Verify that an invalid username results in a BadCredentialsException, and compare the response time against a valid username with an incorrect password. The timing for both cases should be approximately equivalent, demonstrating the mitigation against timing attacks.
5. Test with a long password >72 in length.
6. Attempt to authenticate a valid user with a password longer than 72 characters. Observe that, in the vulnerable version, this triggers a different exception or behavior due to how BCrypt handles long passwords.

Spring Security 5.8.x is no longer supported by open source community as its End of Life date is 2023-12-31. It simply means that version from that date does not receive any updates to address this issue.

‍Users of the affected components should apply one of the following mitigations:

• Leverage the TuxCare support partner for Endless Lifecycle Support that extends regular community EoL security support and simply just apply our patches.
• Alternatively take the effort to upgrade to the newer still supported Spring Security open source versions that have integrated fix: 6.3.9 or 6.4.5

Do you need a fix for this vulnerability for any other Spring Security version, please contact us, we are here to help you!

• https://spring.io/security/cve-2025-22234
• https://www.cybersecurity-help.cz/vdb/SB2025042310