TLDR; For some folks, the above may be all you need to hear: you may be dropping your coffee and donuts now to get the update applied. Still others will see this "huge post" and think, "crap, I don't have time for this". For you, skip to the bottom and its "concluding key points". You can then decide what you think you do or don't "need to know" and pick and choose from the sections as you like.

Finally, for those who prefer because of the importance of all this to be led more carefully through understanding things (in a way that's worked for the many people I have helped so far this week, and is far more than either Adobe or Hackernews has shared), please do read on.

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The new updates are 1.8.0_321, (aka 8u321), 11.0.14, and 17.0.2, respectively).

For more on them, including information on the security fixes and bug fixes they each contain, see the Oracle resources I list below, as well as some additional info I offer for if you may be skipping to this from a JVM update from before Apr 2021, as well as info for Adobe ColdFusion users on where to find the updated Java versions, what JVM versions Adobe CF supports, and more.

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You can find lots of info in the CF and IT worlds about the log4jshell (or log4shell) "pandemic", since the news broke late Dec 9. If you have not found those yet, first here's a post I did on the Adobe CF portal yesterday with my thoughts (and a "mask" to consider, especially while we await a formal update, "the shot", from Adobe):

My lengthier post at the CF Portal: Dealing with the recent log4j vulnerability, before Adobe releases an update

I have more that I offered originally in this post here, on my carehart.org blog, but first I want to track recent updates and news since I first posted these two blog entries on the morning of Dec 14:

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The new updates are 1.8.0_311, (aka 8u311), 11.0.13, and 17.0.1, respectively).

For more on them, including information on the security fixes and bug fixes they each contain, see the Oracle resources I list below, as well as some additional info I offer for if you may be skipping to this from a JVM update from before Apr 2021, as well as info for Adobe ColdFusion users on where to find the updated Java versions, what JVM versions Adobe CF supports, and more.

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TLDR; A most basic message to hear is "get off of CF9", or any version of CF that is no longer supported. But for the sake of those who wonder, "while I work on that, is my CF 9 really impacted?", I address that, and more. But again updating 9 to just "leave it at that" and get on with your life is NOT the main message to be hearing!

Of course, it's always risky to run old versions of software, and to be clear, CF9 was released in 2009 and CF8 in 2007. Sadly, some shops drag their feet to keep even such old software updated (they each got updates for 5 years after their release). But the problem is really coming home to roost for some.

Who's affected, and who's not? And what can you do, if still on CF9 or 8? And what more is known about the attack?

For more, read on. (BTW, yes I am aware that this is not "new info", as some were sharing it as much as 2 weeks ago. It simply took me time to gather up all the info below, to provide more specifics than those general interest articles were sharing.)

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The TLDR is this: If you create (or are given) a CF "CAR" (ColdFusion ARchive) file, you should treat that as a file that contains passwords, as technically it will, if what was exported into it was in fact any CF Admin setting which holds a password (there are several). No, the passwords are not in plain text within the CAR (which is just a zip). But the info needed to decrypt the passwords is in that file, and the CF Admin INTO WHICH such a CAR is imported will now have those passwords enabled within that CF Admin. Perhaps more dismaying, a savvy coder could easily use that info to convert the "encrypted" passwords into plain text in a single line of code. So one SHOULD indeed take care to secure such CAR files (if not delete them after use).

Do I have your attention now? Just a bit more tldr to preface the post...

Is the concern really unique to CAR files alone? And is deleting the CAR files the only way to "secure" them? No, but a difference is that CAR files may be passed around in a way that other "sensitive" CF files would not be. Indeed, what about the process of simply transporting them from one server to another? Should you be as concerned about that? And what if you don't WANT to delete them because they hold the CF Admin settings of record for an old CF instance you are removing? Should you even be concerned that a colleague also accessing your CF Admin might now use the info identified here to try to obtain a CAR file and use it in ways they should not? And what can you do to limit that? Finally, what about other tools that can save/transfer admin settings, like CFConfig in commandbox?

If you're interested in what's up (and if you or anyone on your server uses the CF Archive mechanism at all, you should be), then do read on. Same if you are not aware of what CAR files are used for, as I will explain.

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Note: This blog post is from 2019. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

But note first that the security aspect applies only to those running CF on Windows (and even then not ALL users of CF on Windows, as I will explain).

Then again, the update also includes a bug fix to a CF Admin, for a UI issue (related to updates, in fact), and if you need that, then you do want the fix (regardless of your OS).

So who needs it? If you need a little more guidance, I offer some clarification, as well as links from Adobe for more.

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Note: This blog post is from 2019. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Update (Nov 20, 2019): Adobe announced today that they'd come out with the "final" versions of this pair of "preview" updates. If you already applied either one, you don't need to do the update, as they are unchanged from the preview. But do note that if you changed your CF Admin update "settings" feature to point to the new "preview" feed url, you should use the button there to revert back to the default update feed url.

Adobe has announced today (Nov 13, 2019) new preview updates for ColdFusion 2016 (preview update 13) and 2018 (preview update 6).

https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2019/11/preview-builds-coldfusion-2018-release-update-6-and-coldfusion-2016-release-update-13-released

These updates address issues reported with the Sept 2019 updates (which I was tracking and warned about when the update was released). If you experienced any of those or other issues discussed in Adobe's post, you should try out the new updates while they are in this preview mode (to share with Adobe any remaining concerns) over the next couple of weeks.

Notice also my initial comment in that Adobe post, with a couple of potentially important reminders regarding the preview, as well as a reminder of my plea for a new approach to updates that would allow one to select to get only the latest security updates of a new update (deferring any bug fixes or new features to the next update), which could have helped many in the case of the Sept updates, that had so many issues seemingly caused by new features and bug fixes.

Note: This blog post is from 2019. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

There is precedent for the proposal I am making, in the way Oracle has in the past handled this problem with Java updates. Let me explain.

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Note: This blog post is from 2019. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Update (Nov 20, 2019): Adobe announced today that they'd come out with a new set of updates to fix the problems in the Sep 24 updates. Today's updates address the various issues reported below about the Sept update. It's important to proceed with performing the updates, for the benefit of the security updates as I discussed below back in Sept.

I shared here Tuesday the news that Adobe had announced there were new updates for CF2018 and 2016, released that day.

But as has happened every few releases, a lot of folks are reporting various problems, enough for me to say that folks may want to hold off on applying these updates, which I realize is a risky proposition since the update includes security fixes. More on that below.

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Update Nov 13: Adobe has released a preview of new updates, meant to address the issues in these Sep 2019 updates. For more, see my post: https://www.carehart.org/blog/2019/11/13/preview_available_for_new_coldfusion_updates//

Update Sep 27: Adobe has commented below (Sep 27) saying that there are now fixes available for the bugs reported (but that you must request each directly from them, and that an update refresh is not planned). See Vamsee's comment below, and my reply to that (asking for a bit more detail). For now, I have added any links I've seen to fixes for any of these.
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Of course, if you need something in the update and want to try it, just be sure to do ample testing, and check out some of the problems people are reporting below. And beware that some issues may only happen under load, so you may not find them in your own testing.

Otherwise, let's see if Adobe may either "refresh" the update or may well "pull" it, as they did with the Feb 2019 updates for CF 2016 and 11, when they replaced those with another a week later (see the "Note" about it at the top of that page).

For more, read on.

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