Spring Framework < 5.2.20 / 5.3.x < 5.3.18 Remote Code Execution (Spring4Shell)

Spring MVC and Spring WebFlux applications, when packaged as a traditional WAR file, running on JDK version 9 and higher in an Apache Tomcat servlet container and exposing one or more endpoints with DataBinder enabled, suffer from a Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability.

By crafting a specific HTTP request, an attacker could leverage the vulnerability to compromise the target by, for example, hosting a web shell on the target application.