Security News > 2020 > February > GhostCat: New High-Risk Vulnerability Affects Servers Running Apache Tomcat
If your web server is running on Apache Tomcat, you should immediately install the latest available version of the server application to prevent hackers from taking unauthorized control over it.
Yes, that's possible because all versions of the Apache Tomcat released in the past 13 years have been found vulnerable to a new high-severity 'file read and inclusion bug'-which can be exploited in the default configuration.
What is Ghostcat Flaw And How Does it Work? According to Chinese cybersecurity company Chaitin Tech, the vulnerability resides in the AJP protocol of Apache Tomcat software that arises due to improper handling of an attribute.
Apache JServ Protocol protocol is basically an optimized version of the HTTP protocol to allow Tomcat to communicate with an Apache web-server.
Apache Tomcat Vulnerability: Patch and Mitigation Chaitin researchers found and reported this flaw last month to the Apache Tomcat project, who has now released Apache Tomcat 9.0.31, 8.5.51, and 7.0.100 versions to patch the issue.