CVE-2023-34042 is a low-to-medium severity permission flaw in Spring Security where the bundled spring-security.xsd file inside the spring-security-config JAR is packaged as world-writable. That single detail is the whole vulnerability: if the file is extracted onto a filesystem that preserves its permissions, any local user or process can modify it. The CVE carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.5 (medium), classified as CWE-732, Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource.
If you run Spring-based applications, this is worth understanding not because it is dramatic, but because it is exactly the kind of low-noise supply chain issue that lingers in scan reports and never gets triaged correctly.
What the vulnerability actually is
Spring Security ships an XML schema definition file, spring-security.xsd, inside the spring-security-config artifact. The schema is used to validate the XML namespace configuration that older Spring applications rely on. In the affected releases, that file was packaged with overly permissive filesystem permissions — effectively world-writable.
Inside a JAR, file permission bits don't matter much: the archive is read as a stream and the classloader doesn't care about POSIX mode bits. The risk appears when something extracts the JAR contents to disk and preserves the packaged permissions. At that point, spring-security.xsd becomes a file that any local account can overwrite.
Because the schema governs how XML security configuration is interpreted, tampering with it could let a local attacker alter or inject configuration data. NVD scores the impact as high on integrity (C:N/I:H/A:N) but requires local access and low privileges, which is why the overall score lands at medium rather than critical.
Affected versions
The flaw affects several Spring Security release lines:
- 6.1.1 through 6.1.3
- 6.0.4 through 6.0.6
- 5.8.4 through 5.8.6
- 5.7.9 through 5.7.10
The fix moves the packaged file to a non-world-writable permission set. Upgrade to the next patch release in your line — 6.1.4, 6.0.7, 5.8.7, or 5.7.11 — or later.
To find out what you actually run, don't guess from the parent Spring Boot version. Resolve the concrete spring-security-config version:
# Maven
mvn dependency:tree -Dincludes=org.springframework.security:spring-security-config
# Gradle
./gradlew dependencyInsight --dependency spring-security-config
Remember that Spring Security is often pulled in transitively by Spring Boot starters, so the version you see may be one that Boot's dependency management picked, not one you declared.
How to reason about the real risk
Before you drop everything to patch, walk through the exploit conditions honestly. CVE-2023-34042 requires:
- The
spring-security.xsdfile to be extracted to a filesystem that preserves the packaged permission bits. - A local attacker who already has an account on that host.
- That attacker to benefit from tampering with the schema.
For the vast majority of deployments where the JAR runs as-is inside a container or an uber-JAR and is never extracted with permissions preserved, the practical exposure is minimal. That is not a reason to ignore it — a stale medium-severity finding still fails policy gates and clutters your backlog — but it is a reason not to treat it as an incident.
Where it matters more is in build pipelines and shared multi-tenant hosts that explode JARs onto disk, and in hardened environments with strict CWE-732 controls where any world-writable artifact is an automatic finding.
Remediation steps
The clean fix is a version bump. There is no supported configuration workaround that beats simply moving to a patched release.
<!-- Maven: pin the patched version explicitly if Boot BOM hasn't caught up -->
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-security-config</artifactId>
<version>6.1.4</version>
</dependency>
If you manage Spring versions through the Spring Boot BOM, upgrading Boot to a release that pulls a patched Spring Security is the maintainable path — overriding a single transitive dependency by hand tends to drift out of sync with the rest of the framework.
After patching, verify by re-resolving the dependency tree and confirming the version is at or above the fixed release. If you extract JARs anywhere in your pipeline, add a check that no extracted resource carries world-writable permissions, since this class of issue recurs across ecosystems.
Catching this class of issue earlier
CVE-2023-34042 is a good example of a finding that lives in a transitive dependency most teams never declared directly. Nobody adds spring-security-config to a POM by hand; it arrives with a starter. That is why software composition analysis matters — an SCA tool resolves the full transitive graph and can flag a vulnerable spring-security-config even when your own pom.xml never mentions it, and a tool such as Safeguard will surface which upstream starter is pulling it in so you know exactly what to bump.
The broader lesson is packaging hygiene. File permissions inside artifacts are easy to get wrong and easy to overlook, because they are invisible until something extracts the archive. If you publish JARs or other archives yourself, treat resource permissions as part of your build's security posture, not an afterthought. For a deeper walk through dependency risk in the JVM ecosystem, see our Jackson databind security guide.
FAQ
Is CVE-2023-34042 remotely exploitable?
No. The flaw requires local filesystem access and the affected file to have been extracted with its packaged permissions preserved. It is not a remote code execution issue, which is why its CVSS base score is 5.5 rather than critical.
Which Spring Security versions fix CVE-2023-34042?
Upgrade to 6.1.4, 6.0.7, 5.8.7, or 5.7.11 (or any later release in those lines). Each of these repackages spring-security.xsd without world-writable permissions.
Do I need to worry about this if I deploy an uber-JAR in a container?
Usually not in practice, because the schema file is never extracted to disk with preserved permissions in that model. Still patch it to clear the finding from scans and policy gates, but you can treat it as routine maintenance rather than an emergency.
How do I know if my app even uses the affected component?
Run mvn dependency:tree or ./gradlew dependencyInsight filtered to spring-security-config. If it resolves to any affected version, you are in scope — even if you never declared Spring Security directly, since Spring Boot starters pull it in transitively.