CAPEC-138
Reflection Injection
An adversary supplies a value to the target application which is then used by reflection methods to identify a class, method, or field. For example, in the Java programming language the reflection libraries permit an application to inspect, load, and invoke classes and their components by name. If an adversary can control the input into these methods including the name of the class/method/field or the parameters passed to methods, they can cause the targeted application to invoke incorrect methods, read random fields, or even to load and utilize malicious classes that the adversary created. This can lead to the application revealing sensitive information, returning incorrect results, or even having the adversary take control of the targeted application.
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Explain the attack pattern CAPEC-138: Reflection Injection: how it unfolds, what it needs and how to prevent and detect it in my systems. Use https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/138.html and https://cve.bz/cve/capec/138?via=ask-ai-copy, which lists recent CVEs with the weaknesses it exploits. Cite the sources.Opens a third-party assistant; its answer is its own, not cve.bz's. The prompt holds only this attack pattern's id and public links.
Prerequisites
The target application must utilize reflection libraries and allow users to directly control the parameters to these methods. If the adversary can host classes where the target can invoke them, more powerful variants of this attack are possible.
The target application must accept a string as user input, fail to sanitize characters that have a special meaning in the parameter encoding, and insert the user-supplied string in an encoding which is then processed.
Resources required
None: No specialized resources are required to execute this type of attack.
Weaknesses it exploits
- CWE-470 Use of Externally-Controlled Input to Select Classes or Code
Recent CVEs with these weaknesses
- 7.5CVE-2026-124035
Unsafe reflection in the error mitigation schema validation in Amazon Braket Schemas before 1.32.2 might allow a remote authenticated user with S3 write access to the quantum task output location to execute arbitrary code on any machine th…
- –CVE-2026-82440
Description Nimbus instantiates the class named by a topology's `topology.scheduler.strategy` when scheduling it. The allowlist intended to constrain that choice, `nimbus.scheduler.strategy.class.whitelist`, was treated as "allow any clas…
- 4.3CVE-2026-78636
IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty 17.0.0.3 through 26.0.0.10 is affected by an information disclosure vulnerability due to unsafe class reflection in the JMX REST connector body parser.
- 6.1CVE-2026-123544
OpenAM before 16.1.4 and its client SDK fail to sufficiently validate responses on the internal server-to-server SOAP channel, allowing network-positioned attackers to affect integrity and availability. Attackers who intercept unencrypted …
- –CVE-2026-90436
** UNSUPPORTED WHEN ASSIGNED ** Deserialization of an inbound SOAP fault in Apache Axis 1.x allows unauthenticated remote class instantiation. When a SOAP <Fault> carries a <detail><exceptionName> element, Axis loads the named class and, i…
- –CVE-2026-82894
Improper Authorization in ContentWorker in Apache OFBiz 24.09 before 24.09.08 on all platforms allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to trigger arbitrary OFBiz service invocation with attacker-controlled parameters, resulting in arbitra…
- 10.0CVE-2026-73098
Improper control of dynamically-loaded code vulnerability in Apache Juneau. When Apache Juneau parses a value into a property of type java.lang.Class (including parameterized forms), the default class swap loaded the named class with init…
- 9.2CVE-2026-119084
Unsafe reflection in the connection parameter and credentials profile handling of Amazon Redshift JDBC Driver before 2.3.0 might allow an actor who can influence the JDBC connection URL or the AWS credentials profile to execute arbitrary c…
The newest records naming one of them. Each weakness's page lists them all.
Related attack patterns
- Part of
- CAPEC-137 Parameter Injection
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