A critical security flaw has been uncovered in Apache Syncope, the widely used open-source identity management system, potentially putting organizations at risk of exposing sensitive password information.
Tracked as CVE-2025-65998, the vulnerability was publicly disclosed on November 24, 2025, by Francesco Chicchiriccò through the official Apache Syncope user mailing list. Credit for discovering the issue goes to Clemens Bergmann of the Technical University of Darmstadt.
Understanding the CVE-2025-65998 Vulnerability
The vulnerability specifically affects Apache Syncope instances configured to store user passwords in their internal database using AES encryption. While this configuration is not enabled by default, organizations that activate it may unknowingly introduce a significant security risk. The system relies on a hard-coded AES key embedded directly in the application’s source code.
This design oversight means that any attacker who gains access to the internal database can easily decrypt stored password values, recovering them in plaintext. This compromise poses a severe risk for account security, allowing unauthorized access, privilege escalation, and lateral movement within affected networks.
It is important to note that this flaw only affects passwords stored using the internal AES encryption feature. Other database attributes encrypted through key management mechanisms remain unaffected, as they use separate AES keys and proper encryption handling.
Affected Versions
Research indicates that multiple versions of Apache Syncope are vulnerable to CVE-2025-65998, including:
- 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
Organizations running these versions are strongly advised to upgrade to patched releases—version 3.0.15 or 4.0.3—to mitigate the risk. The update replaces the vulnerable hard-coded AES key approach with a more secure key management process, ensuring that password data cannot be trivially decrypted even if the database is compromised.
Potential Impact
Exploitation of CVE-2025-65998 can have serious operational consequences. Once an attacker accesses the internal database, all passwords stored with the default AES encryption method can be decrypted, exposing users’ credentials.
This breach can lead to unauthorized account logins, elevated privileges, and potential internal movement across systems, amplifying the threat to organizational security. Francesco Chicchiriccò, in the advisory posted to the Apache Syncope mailing list, emphasized the importance of upgrading affected systems promptly:
“Apache Syncope can be configured to store 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 obtaining access to the internal database content, to reconstruct the original cleartext password values.”
Clemens Bergmann of the Technical University of Darmstadt is credited with identifying this security gap, bringing attention to the risks associated with embedded AES encryption keys without proper key management.
Mitigation Steps
Administrators should promptly review their Apache Syncope deployments. Systems using AES encryption for internal password storage must be updated to versions 3.0.15 or 4.0.3, and key management practices should be strengthened to avoid hard-coded keys.
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