CVE-2025-65998: Apache Syncope: Default AES key used for internal password encryption

[Francesco Chicchiriccò <ilgrosso () apache org>]

Severity: important 

Affected versions:

- Apache Syncope (org.apache.syncope.core:syncope-core-spring) 2.1 through 2.1.14
- Apache Syncope (org.apache.syncope.core:syncope-core-spring) 3.0 through 3.0.14
- Apache Syncope (org.apache.syncope.core:syncope-core-spring) 4.0 through 4.0.2

Description:

Apache Syncope can be configured to store the user password values in the internal database with AES encryption, though 
this is not the default option.

When AES is configured, the default key value, hard-coded in the source code, is always used. This allows a malicious 
attacker, once obtained access to the internal database content, to reconstruct the original cleartext password values.
This is not affecting encrypted plain attributes, whose values are also stored using AES encryption.

Users are recommended to upgrade to version 3.0.15 / 4.0.3, which fix this issue.

Credit:

Clemens Bergmann (Technical University of Darmstadt) (finder)

References:

https://syncope.apache.org/
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-65998