Critical

Critical vulnerability found in cron-utils

  • Disclosed: 15.11.2021
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 12:22

Impact

A Template Injection was identified in cron-utils enabling attackers to inject arbitrary Java EL expressions, leading to unauthenticated Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability. Versions up to 9.1.2 are susceptible to this vulnerability. Please note, that only projects using the @Cron annotation to validate untrusted Cron expressions are affected.

Patches

The issue was patched and a new version was released. Please upgrade to version 9.1.6.

Workarounds

There are no known workarounds up to this moment.

References

A description of the issue is provided in issue 461

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

Open an issue in the cron-utils Github repository

Affected software

Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.

PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
Java / Kotlin (Maven) com.cronutils:cron-utils < 9.1.6 9.1.6

References

CVSS score 10/10
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-94
Platform
Java / Kotlin (Maven)
Package
com.cronutils:cron-utils
Disclosed
15.11.2021
Updated
11.10.2026 12:22

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-p9m8-27x8-rg87 - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: com.cronutils:cron-utils

All published vulnerabilities of this package (Java / Kotlin (Maven)), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.

Total entries
2
First → latest
11.2020 11.2021
Without a fix
0
Exploited in attacks
0

Severity breakdown

  • Critical 2

Disclosures per year

  1. 2020: 1
  2. 2021: 1
  3. 2022: 0
  4. 2023: 0
  5. 2024: 0
  6. 2025: 0
  7. 2026: 0
  1. Critical vulnerability found in cron-utils this entry
    Critical · 10.0 CVE-2021-41269 < 9.1.6 9.1.6
  2. Critical · 7.9 CVE-2020-26238 < 9.1.3 9.1.3

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