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Community Manager
May 13, 2025
Question

NOW LIVE! ColdFusion 2025, 2023, and 2021 May security updates

  • May 13, 2025
  • 5 replies
  • 3262 views

We are pleased to inform you that we've released security updates for ColdFusion 2025, 2023, and 2021 releases. For more information, see the respective tech notes:

 

These updates resolve several critical and important vulnerabilities that could lead to arbitrary file system read, arbitrary code execution, and security feature bypass. View the security bulletin, APSB25-52, for more information.

 

Download the updates

 

What's new in the updates

  • New JVM flags
  • Changes to remote method
  • Refreshed add-on installers
  • Pathfilter changes

 

Others

  • Bug fixes
  • Known issues

 

Docker and cffiddle

 

Please download and apply the updates and provide your feedback.

    5 replies

    Participating Frequently
    June 12, 2025

    On a 2023 box i'm running into the problem that my scheduled tasks are missing.
    According to the patch notes this is expected, but the neo-cron.bak file that I should be able to restore is also empty.

    Charlie Arehart
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    June 13, 2025

    Sadly, yes. This is a long-time problem of the scheduled task mechanism, that it keeps only one generation of backup--and various things cause CF to rotate that, so that a problem can quickly make it that no good backup remains, unless you take one yourself (and few bother). I will note that the technote was modified some days after it came out to warn that "Before applying the update, take a backup of the neo-cron.xml file located in the <cf_root>/cfusion/lib directory." That's of course too late for you.

     

    If you have no server backup to revert to, then you may be out of luck with no choice but to recreate the tasks. As for what their name and URL was, you can find that info in the scheduler.log (if you told CF to log tasks, which tracks the name and time) and in the http.log (which tracks ALL calls out of CF to any url, whether via cfhttp or via a scheduled task, and which tracks the url and the time).

     

    (And if anyone may wonder if the backup folder for the update, within hf-updates, might track the neo-cron.xml file, sadly it does not. I have not ever found any of the neo*.xml files in there.)

     

    While we're on this topic, a thought would be that some people may come to realize that it could be valuable to put the neo-cron.xml files under some sort of version control--automatically detecting and saving when the file changes. But I'll add also that the CF2023 feature called CCS (or central confuguration service) would itself track backups of changes made. Again, all too late for those bit by this updaet issue already. I don't work for Adobe and had no hand in the matter, other than trying to help people once it's happened.

    /Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart. org)
    Participating Frequently
    May 30, 2025

    The classification of this update appears to have changed silently from 3 to 1?

    And why doesn't adobe just ship an update for the mysql driver via the package manager?

    Participating Frequently
    May 30, 2025

    I'm running into issues and had had to roll the update back/restore a snapshot. Also seing a hibernation like  error @Brian32294452d08h is dealing with that I have hard time explaining.
    Will look into this with development.
    org.hibernate.engine.jdbc.dialect.spi.DialectResolutionInfo not found by orm [197]

     

    Are there any steps to take to mitigate the reason why this patch now has priority 1?

    I've verified that adobe did indeed communicate this patch origionally as priority 3.
    Adobe really should communicate these changes.

    Participating Frequently
    June 4, 2025

    Stopping the CF instance, clearing the Felix cache, and restarting the CF instance appears to work to temporarily get rid of this not found by ORM error.

    Inspiring
    May 30, 2025

    After applying the update, we are no longer able to edit/save scheduled tasks. The admin screen says "Invalid extension of the file name. Valid extensions are :log,txt". The work around: stop cf, edit the neo-cron.xml file, start cf, but that's not going to work long term. Please advise...

    Participating Frequently
    May 17, 2025

    I tried updating a couple of our servers running CF2021 U19 to CF2021 U20.

     

    The updater completed without any errors, but our applications immediately started throwing an error stating:

    Enable SessionManagement to use Session manipulation methods.

     

    This is coming from our application.cfc file, but it definitely has a line near the top of the component enabling session management:

    this.sessionmanagement = true;

     

    Additionally, there's a warning in one of the logfiles stating:

    Session management is not enabled.

     

    I also double checked the ColdFusion Administrator settings and session management is definitely enabled (using memory), as it was before we applied the update.

     

    Any ideas?  For now I've rolled back our snapshot on these 2 servers and will hold off on updating our other servers until we can figure this out.

     

    Thanks

     

     

    Charlie Arehart
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    May 17, 2025

    Brian, if you're concluding (or warning) that folks should beware of this happening upon updating, I can say it has not happened to any of the dozens of instances I've updated or helped others update this week. 

     

    As such, whatever is amiss for you seems quite unique. And perhaps Adobe or someone else will step in with a ready explanation/fix/workaround. Until then, I'll ask some questions. First, what platform are you on? It might be helpful to hear. 

     

    Second, you say the "updater completed without any errors". How are you measuring that? By the pop-up msg at the end? Or by the update install log within hf-updates? And did it show 0 fatalerrors and nonfatalerrors? It's possible that's where something went amiss.

     

    Next, did you confirm there weer no new errors during the startup, as tracked in the coldfusion-out.log? Look especially during the startup which followed the update. That should show uninstallation (only) or any packages update (it never shows their "installation" after that).

     

    Before you might report the various errors you may/will see, please do look also at the log's tracking of the startups BEFORE the update: we're only focusing on what errors are new on the startup AFTER the update. (And if you've since restarted cf and your issue remains, you could assess as well the startup logs for that. But look especially at the first startup after the update, which alone should have attempted the package updates.)

     

    Let us know what you find. And if no other solution comes up from others, I suspect I could help you get things working (via a remote screenshare consulting session, in perhaps as little as 15 mins, even this weekend). If I can't help, you'd not pay for my time. If we found some new bug, you could report it to Adobe. Or again they may offer you direct help,.or someone else here may provide a solution. 

    /Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart. org)
    Participating Frequently
    May 17, 2025

    Thanks for the reply.

     

    We're on Windows Server.  When I say the update completed without errors, I'm only referring to the pop-up message at the end.

     

    The first server I updated worked fine (and the site / application tested fine afterward).  I proceeded to update two more servers.

    The first server that worked fine is different from the other two that had the issue.  The first server's application (website) only relies on application.cfm style processing.  The other two rely on application.cfc.

     

    On all three servers, the window at the end of the update installation said installation was successful, I logged into ColdFusion Administrator and verified the new version number for the core server and for all of the packages that were updated in this patch, then I initiated a reboot of the server VM and waited for the server to come back up.

     

    I didn't check the update installer log specifically, but will the next time I try the update.  I did check the coldfusion logs for message on service startup, and I didn't see anything new that would explain anything that wasn't present from past service startups.  These are production servers and I was working in a narrow maintenance window at midnight, so I didn't want to spend too much time digging around blindly.  I was focused on restoring the services.  I'll try to schedule a longer maintenance window for the next attempt, in antiticpation of this happening again and needing to be investigated.

     

    I'll update here likely in a week, hopefully with a solution but at least with more information from logs and testing.

    Inspiring
    May 15, 2025

    Just a note for others that may have this issue.

     

    For one of my clients on CF2021 Update 19, upgrading to Update 20 caused PDF errors. Issue was resolved after deleting the cfusion/bin/felix-cache folder and restarting ColdFusion (ColdFusion service needs to be stopped before deleting it).

    Charlie Arehart
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    May 15, 2025

    Thanks for sharing, Roberto. Yes, this has been a step frequently mentioned in recent cf update technotes. I was surprised to see it not in this one, and I hoped it meant that at least those coming from the April update maybe didn't need to.

     

    Really, I just now recommend do it after every cf update, as part of good hygiene. And I recommended it in my post this week on the update

     

    If nothing else, I hope Adobe will consider whether that suggestion to do it should be added to this latest update's technote.  And until then, let's hope this suggestion of yours helps others finding this post. 

    /Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart. org)