Medium [CVE-2025-68161 +1] Apache Log4j: The fix for CVE-2025-68161 https://logging.apache.org/security.html#CVE-2025-68161 was incomplete: it addressed hostname…
This medium-severity Apache Software Foundation advisory covers CVE-2025-68161 and CVE-2026-34477 affecting Apache Log4j, Apache Log4j Core, Log4j.
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Summary
The fix for CVE-2025-68161 was incomplete: it addressed hostname verification only when enabled via the log4j2.sslVerifyHostName system property, but not when configured through the verifyHostName attribute of the element.
Although the verifyHostName configuration attribute was introduced in Log4j Core 2.12.0, it was silently ignored in all versions through 2.25.3, leaving TLS connections vulnerable to interception regardless of the configured value.
A network-based attacker may be able to perform a man-in-the-middle attack when all of the following conditions are met:
- An SMTP, Socket, or Syslog appender is in use.
- TLS is configured via a nested element.
- The attacker can present a certificate issued by a CA trusted by the appender's configured trust store, or by the default Java trust store if none is configured.
This issue does not affect users of the HTTP appender, which uses a separate verifyHostname attribute that was not subject to this bug and verifies host names by default.
Users are advised to upgrade to Apache Log4j Core 2.25.4, which corrects this issue.
- through 2.25.3
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 2 months ago·verify at source
- 2.25.4
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 2 months ago·verify at source
Mitigation
Upgrade to a fixed release: 2.25.4. That is the remediation for this advisory.
The vendor advisory may list additional interim mitigations or workarounds not captured here — review it before change work.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 2 months ago·verify at source
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