Security News > 2021 > December > Apache takes off, nukes insecure feature at the heart of Log4j from orbit with v2.16

Last week, version 2.15 of the widely used open-source logging library Log4j was released to tackle a critical security hole, dubbed Log4Shell, which could be trivially abused by miscreants to hijack servers and apps over the internet.

Apache also conceded JNDI "Has significant security issues," so it's decide it is best to just deactivate it by default.

In its latest release notes for Log4j 2.x, the Apache Foundation said: "Dealing with CVE-2021-44228 has shown the JNDI has significant security issues. While we have mitigated what we are aware of it would be safer for users to completely disable it by default, especially since the large majority are unlikely to be using it."

With JNDI enabled, Log4j could be tricked into fetching Java code from an attacker-controlled server and blindly executing it, compromising the device.

Essentially, if you're using Log4j 2.x versions 2.14 or below, upgrade to 2.16, and if you're already on 2.15, consider 2.16 to be safe: the JNDI code is not known to be terribly secure.

Britain's National Cyber Security Centre earlier today said it wasn't seeing much obviously malicious web traffic linked to Log4j other than scanning to identify vulnerable systems, though as the day has worn on, infosec folk say attacks are ramping up.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/12/14/apache_log4j_v2_16_jndi_disabled_default/