CVE-2025-54253:
Adobe Experience Manager vulnerability analysis and mitigation

Overview

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Forms on JEE versions 6.5.23 and earlier are affected by a critical misconfiguration vulnerability identified as CVE-2025-54253. The vulnerability was discovered by Shubham Shah and Adam Kues of Searchlight Cyber and was disclosed to Adobe on April 28, 2025. This security flaw could result in arbitrary code execution without requiring user interaction (Bleeping Computer, Security Online).

Technical details

The vulnerability has been assigned a Critical severity rating with a CVSS base score of 10.0 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H). The flaw is caused by an authentication bypass in the /adminui module combined with a misconfigured developer setting. Specifically, Struts2's development mode was left enabled by mistake, allowing attackers to execute OGNL expressions through debug parameters sent in HTTP requests (Bleeping Computer).

Impact

The vulnerability enables attackers to bypass security mechanisms and execute arbitrary code on affected systems. The impact is particularly severe as it requires no user interaction and can affect the scope of the entire system. The maximum CVSS score of 10.0 indicates the potential for complete system compromise (Security Online).

Mitigation and workarounds

Adobe has released emergency updates to address this vulnerability. Organizations are strongly advised to update to version 6.5.0-0108 or later immediately. If immediate updating is not possible, administrators should restrict access to the platform from the internet as a temporary mitigation measure (Security Online).