Potential Vulnerabilities Due To Hidden Dependencies

I am a student at Paderborn University and am analyzing security risks introduced by hidden dependencies in my master’s thesis. Software security researchers and I have found that this GitHub project incorporates known vulnerabilities within modified dependencies.

What are Hidden Dependencies?

Dependency modifications such as re-bundling and re-packaging (introduced for example by the Maven Shade plugin) can hide the inclusion of potentially vulnerable dependencies, as those dependencies are not found by vulnerability scanners that rely on metadata. In our approach, we identified hidden dependencies by matching fingerprints of known-to-be-vulnerable dependencies to the JAR files of direct and transitive dependencies listed in the software bill of materials.

Suggested Solution

You can find a list of hidden vulnerable dependencies that are included in this project at the end of this message. Please note that exploitability has not been investigated. We recommend either removing the affected dependencies or updating them to newer versions.

Your Perspective

As part of my master’s thesis, I am investigating awareness and patching behavior related to such hidden vulnerable dependencies. I would appreciate it if you could share your perspective and take a 5-minute anonymous survey at: https://umfragen.uni-paderborn.de/index.php/542735. Thank you!

List of vulnerable modified dependencies:

org.apache.pulsar:pulsar-client:4.1.3 includes:

• io.airlift:aircompressor:0.27 - CVE-2025-67721
• io.netty:netty-codec-dns:4.1.131.Final - CVE-2026-42579
• io.netty:netty-handler-proxy:4.1.102.Final - CVE-2026-42578