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Document new security vulnerability in Apache Spark #683

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Document new security vulnerability in Apache Spark
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Expand Up @@ -58,6 +58,30 @@ This includes verifying the source, validating integrity, and applying appropria
before loading or deploying a model.

<h2>Known security issues</h2>
<h3 id="CVE-2025-55039">CVE-2025-55039: Apache Spark: RPC encryption defaults to unauthenticated AES-CTR mode, enabling man-in-the-middle ciphertext modification attacks</h3>
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Severity: Moderate

Vendor: The Apache Software Foundation

Versions Affected:

- Versions prior to 3.4.4, 3.5.2 and 4.0.0

Description:

Apache Spark versions before 4.0.0, 3.5.2 and 3.4.4 use an insecure default network encryption cipher for RPC communication between nodes.
When spark.network.crypto.enabled is set to true (it is set to false by default), but spark.network.crypto.cipher is not explicitly configured, Spark defaults to AES in CTR mode (AES/CTR/NoPadding), which provides encryption without authentication.
This vulnerability allows a man-in-the-middle attacker to modify encrypted RPC traffic undetected by flipping bits in ciphertext, potentially compromising heartbeat messages or application data and affecting the integrity of Spark workflows.

Mitigation:

- Either configure `spark.network.crypto.cipher` to "AES/GCM/NoPadding" to enable authenticated encryption or enable SSL encryption by setting both `spark.ssl.enabled` and `spark.ssl.rpc.enabled` to "true", which provides stronger transport security.

Credit:

- Holden Karau


<h3 id="CVE-2023-32007">CVE-2023-32007: Apache Spark shell command injection vulnerability via Spark UI</h3>

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