This is a very important heads-up for my readers: there was an important security update released today by Adobe for ColdFusion 2023 (update 7) and 2021 (update 13). While as always there's much to say about what's changed in this update, I want to make this important clarification:
It's very important that people read the technote before "just applying this update". There is a very important (and fundamental) change in how CFML processes variables, with regard to searching for scopes when no scope is indicated on a variable name. It's NOT that you "must scope all your variables", as some are asserting. But it's still almost certainly a BREAKING change in many CF apps, if they use unscoped variables under certain conditions (that I discuss below). The change is for the sake of security, but it's just one aspect of the security fixes in this update.
Anyway, there are 3 things you can consider doing to rectify/work-around this breaking change, as I discuss below (or see the update technote, for this and more). And you may reasonably wonder what the implications would be of using the workarounds. You may also wonder if this scope matter relates to the CVE listed in the APSB (linked to below). That's currently unclear. It does not. As well, note that the Adobe security bulletin (link below) shows the security fix to be only a P3 (priority 3, the lowest severity), not a P1 (priority 1, the highest), though it IS regarded as "critical".1
But then there are still other aspects of the update beyond this scope matter, and you should be aware of those also.
For more, read on.
[....Continue Reading....]
