CVE-2025-53606
Published: 08 August 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-53606 is a critical-severity Deserialization of Untrusted Data (CWE-502) vulnerability in Apache Seata. Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked in the top 38.9% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-10 (Information Input Validation) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Directly requires timely identification, reporting, and correction of flaws like this deserialization vulnerability through patching or upgrading to Seata 2.5.0.
Mandates validation of untrusted inputs from external sources using defined mechanisms to block malicious serialized data from being deserialized.
Provides integrity monitoring of software and firmware to detect unauthorized changes resulting from arbitrary code execution triggered by deserialization.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Remote unauthenticated deserialization RCE in public-facing Apache Seata service directly enables T1190.
NVD Description
Deserialization of Untrusted Data vulnerability in Apache Seata (incubating). This issue affects Apache Seata (incubating): 2.4.0. Users are recommended to upgrade to version 2.5.0, which fixes the issue.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-53606 is a Deserialization of Untrusted Data vulnerability (CWE-502) in Apache Seata (incubating) version 2.4.0. Published on 2025-08-08, it carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8, indicating critical severity due to its potential for high impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
The vulnerability can be exploited over the network (AV:N) with low attack complexity (AC:L), requiring no privileges (PR:N) or user interaction (UI:N), and without changing the scope (S:U). A remote unauthenticated attacker can thus trigger deserialization of untrusted data, potentially achieving arbitrary code execution and full system compromise with high impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Apache advisories recommend upgrading to version 2.5.0, which fixes the issue. Additional details are available in the Apache mailing list announcement at https://lists.apache.org/thread/ggfd72vvvxjozs81zbcls45zxg64pphx and the OSS-Security mailing list at http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/08/07/1.
Details
- CWE(s)