Improper Handling of TLS Client Authentication Failure Leading to Anonymous Principal Assignment in Apache Storm
Versions Affected: up to 2.8.7
Description: When TLS transport is enabled in Apache Storm without requiring client certificate authentication (the default configuration), the TlsTransportPlugin assigns a fallback principal (CN=ANONYMOUS) if no client certificate is presented or if certificate verification fails. The underlying SSLPeerUnverifiedException is caught and suppressed rather than rejecting the connection.
This fail-open behavior means an unauthenticated client can establish a TLS connection and receive a valid principal identity. If the configured authorizer (e.g., SimpleACLAuthorizer) does not explicitly deny access to CN=ANONYMOUS, this may result in unauthorized access to Storm services. The condition is logged at debug level only, reducing visibility in production.
Impact: Unauthenticated clients may be assigned a principal identity, potentially bypassing authorization in permissive or misconfigured environments.
Mitigation: Users should upgrade to 2.8.7 in which TLS authentication failures are handled in a fail-closed manner.
Users who cannot upgrade immediately should:
- Enable mandatory client certificate authentication (nimbus.thrift.tls.client.auth.required: true)
- Ensure authorization rules explicitly deny access to CN=ANONYMOUS
- Review all ACL configurations for implicit default-allow behavior
CVSS Score
6.5
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2026-04-27
An Unsafe Deserialization vulnerability exists in the worker services of the Apache Storm supervisor server allowing pre-auth Remote Code Execution (RCE). Apache Storm 2.2.x users should upgrade to version 2.2.1 or 2.3.0. Apache Storm 2.1.x users should upgrade to version 2.1.1. Apache Storm 1.x users should upgrade to version 1.2.4
CVSS Score
9.8
EPSS Score
0.462
Published
2021-10-25
A Command Injection vulnerability exists in the getTopologyHistory service of the Apache Storm 2.x prior to 2.2.1 and Apache Storm 1.x prior to 1.2.4. A specially crafted thrift request to the Nimbus server allows Remote Code Execution (RCE) prior to authentication.
CVSS Score
9.8
EPSS Score
0.821
Published
2021-10-25
The Apache Storm Logviewer daemon exposes HTTP-accessible endpoints to read/search log files on hosts running Storm. In Apache Storm versions 0.9.1-incubating to 1.2.2, it is possible to read files off the host's file system that were not intended to be accessible via these endpoints.
CVSS Score
7.5
EPSS Score
0.006
Published
2019-07-26
In Apache Storm versions 1.1.0 to 1.2.2, when the user is using the storm-kafka-client or storm-kafka modules, it is possible to cause the Storm UI daemon to deserialize user provided bytes into a Java class.
CVSS Score
9.8
EPSS Score
0.015
Published
2019-07-26
Apache Storm version 1.0.6 and earlier, 1.2.1 and earlier, and version 1.1.2 and earlier expose a vulnerability that could allow a user to impersonate another user when communicating with some Storm Daemons.
CVSS Score
6.5
EPSS Score
0.004
Published
2018-06-05
Apache Storm version 1.0.6 and earlier, 1.2.1 and earlier, and version 1.1.2 and earlier expose an arbitrary file write vulnerability, that can be achieved using a specially crafted zip archive (affects other archives as well, bzip2, tar, xz, war, cpio, 7z), that holds path traversal filenames. So when the filename gets concatenated to the target extraction directory, the final path ends up outside of the target folder.
CVSS Score
5.5
EPSS Score
0.153
Published
2018-06-05