CVE-2025-68161
Publication date 19 December 2025
Last updated 19 December 2025
Ubuntu priority
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.
Status
| Package | Ubuntu Release | Status |
|---|---|---|
| apache-log4j2 | 25.10 questing |
Needs evaluation
|
| 25.04 plucky |
Needs evaluation
|
|
| 24.04 LTS noble |
Needs evaluation
|
|
| 22.04 LTS jammy |
Needs evaluation
|
|
| 20.04 LTS focal |
Needs evaluation
|
|
| 18.04 LTS bionic |
Needs evaluation
|
|
| 16.04 LTS xenial |
Needs evaluation
|
References
Other references
- https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-68161
- https://github.com/apache/logging-log4j2/pull/4002
- https://lists.apache.org/thread/xr33kyxq3sl67lwb61ggvm1fzc8k7dvx
- https://logging.apache.org/cyclonedx/vdr.xml
- https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/manual/appenders/network.html#SslConfiguration-attr-verifyHostName
- https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/manual/systemproperties.html#log4j2.sslVerifyHostName
- https://logging.apache.org/security.html#CVE-2025-68161
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/12/18/1