Red Hat JBoss EAP: CVE-2018-8039: Improper Handling of Exceptional Conditions

It is possible to configure Apache CXF to use the com.sun.net.ssl implementation via 'System.setProperty("java.protocol.handler.pkgs", "com.sun.net.ssl.internal.www.protocol");'. When this system property is set, CXF uses some reflection to try to make the HostnameVerifier work with the old com.sun.net.ssl.HostnameVerifier interface. However, the default HostnameVerifier implementation in CXF does not implement the method in this interface, and an exception is thrown. However, in Apache CXF prior to 3.2.5 and 3.1.16 the exception is caught in the reflection code and not properly propagated. What this means is that if you are using the com.sun.net.ssl stack with CXF, an error with TLS hostname verification will not be thrown, leaving a CXF client subject to man-in-the-middle attacks.. It was discovered that when Apache CXF is configured to use the system property com.sun.net.ssl.internal.www.protocol ,it uses reflection to make the HostnameVerifier work with old com.sun.net.ssl.HostnameVerifier interface. Although the CXF implementation throws an exception, which is caught in the reflection code but it is not properly propagated, this can lead to a man-in-the-middle attack.