Improper AuthenticationWeakness · CWE-287

CVE-2025-22228

HIGH · 7.4 CVSS v3.1 Published 2025-03-20
Mitigation only
No fix yet — a mitigation exists. There is no fixed release. A documented workaround reduces exposure in the meantime.
See remediation →
83/100
Remediation priority · High
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
BCryptPasswordEncoder.matches(CharSequence,String) will incorrectly return true for passwords larger than 72 characters as long as the first 72 characters are the same.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis · high confidence

BCryptPasswordEncoder.matches() in Spring Security incorrectly returns true for passwords longer than 72 characters as long as the first 72 characters match. This occurs because BCrypt's underlying algorithm truncates password comparisons at 72 bytes, creating a logic flaw where different passwords exceeding this length could authenticate as the same user.

MitigationUpgrade to a patched version of Spring Security that fixes the BCryptPasswordEncoder comparison logic. As a defensive measure, consider enforcing maximum password length constraints or implementing additional verification for accounts with long passwords.

Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
High
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
None

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.

dbcve checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Confirm Spring Security is in use
    Inspect your project dependencies (Maven pom.xml, Gradle build.gradle, or JAR manifests) for spring-security-core or related Spring Security modules.
    Affected if Spring Security is present but the version is unpatched for this vulnerability
  2. Identify the Spring Security version
    Run 'mvn dependency:tree | grep spring-security' or 'gradle dependencies | grep spring-security' to determine the exact Spring Security version in your dependency tree.
    Affected if The version matches the range that contains the flawed BCryptPasswordEncoder logic (compare against official Spring Security advisories)
  3. Verify BCryptPasswordEncoder is configured
    Search your Java or XML configuration files for 'BCryptPasswordEncoder' bean definitions, or look for PasswordEncoder usage in authentication configuration.
    Affected if BCryptPasswordEncoder is being used as the password encoder in your application
  4. Check for password length validation
    Inspect your password registration or change validation logic for any @Size, @Length, or programmatic checks that enforce maximum password length.
    Affected if No validation enforces a maximum password length of 72 characters or fewer, allowing longer passwords to be stored

You are affected if your application uses a vulnerable version of Spring Security with BCryptPasswordEncoder enabled and does not enforce password length constraints, allowing passwords longer than 72 characters to authenticate incorrectly.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

From vendor data
Mitigation available No clean upgrade yet — mitigate in the meantime
Mitigation

Upgrade to a patched version of Spring Security that fixes the BCryptPasswordEncoder comparison logic. As a defensive measure, consider enforcing maximum password length constraints or implementing additional verification for accounts with long passwords.

Have this fixed Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation2.0 h
  • Implementation4.0 h
  • Testing4.0 h
  • Review / QA2.0 h
12.0 hours of engineering $2,080
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Scan for this in your stack

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dbcve dependency scanner

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2025-22228 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data