Skip to main content
Meet us at Black Hat USA 2026— Las Vegas, August 1–6Book a Meeting
Mallory
Unrated

Arbitrary Code Execution in Adobe ColdFusion (CVE-2026-48281)

IdentifiersCVE-2026-48281CWE-20

CVE-2026-48281 is a critical improper input validation vulnerability in Adobe ColdFusion. It affects ColdFusion 2025 Update 9 and earlier and ColdFusion 2023 Update 20 and earlier. According to the provided content, the flaw is remotely exploitable over the network, requires no privileges, and does not require user interaction. Successful exploitation can result in arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user. The specific vulnerable function or code path is not identified in the provided material.

Share:
For your environment

Are you exposed to this one?

Mallory correlates every CVE against your assets, your vendors, and active adversary campaigns. Know which vulnerabilities matter for you, not just which ones are loud.

ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation can allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on an affected ColdFusion system in the context of the current user. The provided content indicates high confidentiality, integrity, and availability impact, with changed scope, meaning compromise may affect resources beyond the vulnerable component's original security boundary.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

If patching cannot be completed immediately, Adobe recommends hardening the environment by updating to the latest supported JDK/JRE LTS release, using the latest MySQL Java connector, applying Adobe ColdFusion security configuration and Lockdown Guide recommendations, and for JEE installations setting the documented JVM serial filter flag: -Djdk.serialFilter=!org.mozilla.;!com.sun.syndication.;!org.apache.commons.beanutils.;!org.jgroups.;!com.sun.rowset.;!com.mysql.cj.jdbc.interceptors.;!org.apache.commons.collections.**. These measures are compensating controls and not substitutes for patching.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade Adobe ColdFusion 2025 to Update 10 or later and Adobe ColdFusion 2023 to Update 21 or later. Apply Adobe's official security updates for APSB26-68 and ensure affected installations are brought to a fixed release immediately.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.

VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
AdobeColdfusionapplication

Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.

What this page doesn’t show

The version that knows your environment.

This page is what’s public. Mallory adds the parts that aren’t: which of your assets are affected, which adversaries are exploiting it right now, which detections to deploy, and what to do tonight.
Exposure mapping

Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.

Threat actor evidence

Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.

Associated malware

Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.

Detection signatures

YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.

Vendor-by-vendor mapping

Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.

Social activity4

Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.