Improper Authentication in Apache Spark
Date: 2022-02
Affected: pip/pyspark, maven/org.apache.spark:spark-parent_2.11
Attack vector: auth-bypass
Category: vulnerability-disclosure
Severity: Critical
CVE: CVE-2020-9480
CWE: CWE-287
CWE-306
CVSS: 9.8 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H)

In Apache Spark 2.4.5 and earlier, a standalone resource manager's master may be configured to require authentication (spark.authenticate) via a shared secret. When enabled, however, a specially-crafted RPC to the master can succeed in starting an application's resources on the Spark cluster, even without the shared key. This can be leveraged to execute shell commands on the host machine. This does not affect Spark clusters using other resource managers (YARN, Mesos, etc).


Mitigations:

Architectural layers (MAESTRO):