What is CVE-2022-35740?

CVE-2022-35740 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Dotcms, classified under Cross-site Scripting. CVSS score: 6.1/10. Published 2022-11-10.

How severe is CVE-2022-35740?

Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.1 out of 10.

Is CVE-2022-35740 known to be exploited?

2 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

XSS in Dotcms

CVE-2022-35740

dotCMS before 22.06 allows remote attackers to bypass intended access control and obtain sensitive information by using a semicolon in a URL to introduce a matrix parameter. (This is also fixed in 5.3.8.12, 21.06.9, and 22.03.2 for LTS users.) Some Java application frameworks, including those used by Spring or Tomcat, allow the use of matrix parameters: these are URI parameters separated by semicolons. Through precise semicolon placement in a URI, it is possible to exploit this feature to avoid dotCMS's path-based XSS prevention (such as "require login" filters), and consequently access restricted resources. For example, an attacker could place a semicolon immediately before a / character that separates elements of a filesystem path. This could reveal file content that is ordinarily only visible to signed-in users. This issue can be chained with other exploit code to achieve XSS attacks against dotCMS.

Vulnerability class: XSS (Cross-Site Scripting)

Published 2022-11-10 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 6.1 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.013 (68.5th percentile), scored 2026-09-30.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 68th percentile — 68.5% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.012 · newest: 0.013 · change: +0.000

Affected products

Dotcms

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-79 — Cross-site Scripting

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

www.dotcms.com/security/SI-63 (Exploit, Mitigation, Vendor Advisory)
github.com/dotCMS/patches-hotfixes/tree/master/com.dotcms.security.matrixparams (Exploit, Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2022-35740?: CVE-2022-35740 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Dotcms, classified under Cross-site Scripting. CVSS score: 6.1/10. Published 2022-11-10.
How severe is CVE-2022-35740?: Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.1 out of 10.
Is CVE-2022-35740 known to be exploited?: 2 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.