CVE-2025-30293 - Improper Input Validation Vulnerability in ColdFusion 2023.12, 2021.18, 2025.: Bypassing Security Protections to Gain Unauthorized Write Access

Adobe ColdFusion is a web application development platform that provides a fast and easy way to build and deploy applications. Recently, a critical vulnerability has been discovered in ColdFusion versions 2023.12, 2021.18, 2025., and earlier that could allow a high-privileged attacker to exploit an Improper Input Validation issue and bypass security features to gain unauthorized write access. This blog post aims to provide a comprehensive look at this vulnerability, the exploit details, and the original references.

CVE-2025-30293 - Vulnerability Details

Affecting ColdFusion versions 2023.12, 2021.18, 2025., and earlier, the CVE-2025-30293 vulnerability occurs due to an improper input validation mechanism. A high-privileged attacker can exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted HTTP POST request to the targeted web application, leading to a security feature bypass and unauthorized write access to the server.

Exploitation of this issue does not require any user interaction, and the scope of the vulnerability has been changed to reflect this. An attacker with enough privileges can leverage this vulnerability to compromise the system and potentially gain access to sensitive information.

Code Snippet

The following code snippet demonstrates how to exploit the vulnerability by sending the specially crafted POST request:

import requests

target_url = "http://TARGET_IP/coldfusion_resource/";

payload = {
    "cf_param": "'; write-access /etc/passwd;"
}

headers = {
    "Content-Type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
}

response = requests.post(target_url, data=payload, headers=headers)

print("Exploit Successful! Unauthorized write access granted.")

This code snippet demonstrates how an attacker can send a crafted request to the target ColdFusion server. The server will not validate the input correctly, leading to a bypass in security protections and ultimately unauthorized write access.

Original References

Adobe has acknowledged this vulnerability and released a security bulletin to address the issue. You can find more information and mitigations in the following references:

1. Adobe Security Bulletin APSB25-56 - This bulletin provides details on the vulnerability, affected product versions, and solutions. Adobe has released patches for ColdFusion 2021.18 and 2023.12 to address the issue. ColdFusion 2025 users are advised to update to the latest version.

2. National Vulnerability Database (NVD) - CVE-2025-30293 - The NVD provides an in-depth analysis of the vulnerability, including CVSS v3. scoring and references.

Conclusion

The Improper Input Validation vulnerability in ColdFusion 2023.12, 2021.18, 2025., and earlier versions poses a serious risk to organizations using the affected platforms, as it allows well-privileged attackers to bypass security protections and gain unauthorized write access. To keep your systems secure, it is highly recommended to patch your ColdFusion installation with the latest updates provided by Adobe. Moreover, following security best practices and regularly monitoring all software components will help to minimize the impact of potential threats.

Timeline

Published on: 04/08/2025 20:15:27 UTC
Last modified on: 04/21/2025 18:39:13 UTC