CVE-2025-62251: Liferay DXP Information Disclosure Flaw

CVE-2025-62251 Overview

CVE-2025-62251 is an information disclosure vulnerability in the Menu Display Widget of Liferay Portal and Liferay Digital Experience Platform (DXP). The widget renders content to users who lack permission to view it, bypassing the portal's access control model. The flaw is categorized under [CWE-732] (Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource). Liferay published the advisory on October 13, 2025. Exploitation requires an authenticated session with high privileges and some user interaction, which limits mass exploitation but still exposes sensitive portal content to unauthorized viewers.

Critical Impact
Authenticated users can view restricted content surfaced through the Menu Display Widget, exposing information that the portal's permission scheme is meant to protect.

Affected Products

Liferay Portal 7.3.0 through 7.4.3.119
Liferay DXP 2023.Q3.1 through 2023.Q3.8 and 2023.Q4.0 through 2023.Q4.5
Liferay DXP 7.4 GA through update 92 and 7.3 GA through update 36

Discovery Timeline

2025-10-13 - CVE-2025-62251 published to NVD
2026-10-18 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-62251

Vulnerability Analysis

The Menu Display Widget in Liferay Portal and Liferay DXP renders navigation entries without fully enforcing the portal's content permission checks. Users who do not have VIEW permission on an underlying asset still see the asset's content when the widget renders the menu. The vulnerability maps to [CWE-732], Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource, and affects both the open-source Liferay Portal and the commercial DXP distribution. The attack vector is network-based through the standard portal interface, and the attacker must already hold an authenticated session.

Root Cause

The widget's rendering logic retrieves and displays menu items without re-evaluating the viewing user's permissions against each linked resource. Access control decisions made at the menu configuration layer do not propagate to the content retrieval layer, so protected assets reachable through the menu are returned in the response body.

Attack Vector

An authenticated user navigates to a page that embeds a Menu Display Widget linked to restricted content. The widget renders the restricted items in the HTTP response, revealing titles, snippets, or body content that the user is not authorized to see. No special tooling is required; the exposure occurs through normal portal browsing.

No verified public proof-of-concept code is available. Refer to the Liferay Vulnerability CVE-2025-62251 advisory for implementation details.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-62251

Indicators of Compromise

Portal access logs showing repeated requests to pages hosting the Menu Display Widget by accounts without broad content permissions.
Audit log entries where restricted asset identifiers appear in rendered responses for low-privilege users.
User activity patterns involving enumeration of menu-linked pages across multiple sites or communities.

Detection Strategies

Review Liferay audit logs for VIEW events on assets accessed through menu widgets by users outside the asset's permission scope.
Correlate HTTP response bodies containing restricted asset metadata with the requesting user's role assignments.
Baseline normal menu widget rendering patterns and alert on anomalous content disclosure volume.

Monitoring Recommendations

Enable verbose auditing on the com.liferay.site.navigation.menu.web module and ship events to a central SIEM.
Monitor for new or modified Site Navigation Menus that reference restricted asset types such as web content, documents, or custom entities.
Track account activity for post-login enumeration behavior across pages that embed menu widgets.

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-62251

Immediate Actions Required

Inventory all pages that embed the Menu Display Widget and identify menus that reference permission-controlled content.
Apply the Liferay-provided fix pack or upgrade to a release that supersedes the affected version ranges.
Restrict the ability to configure Site Navigation Menus to trusted administrators until patching is complete.

Patch Information

Liferay has published remediation guidance in the vendor advisory for CVE-2025-62251. Upgrade Liferay Portal beyond 7.4.3.119 and Liferay DXP beyond the listed update levels for the 7.3, 7.4, 2023.Q3, and 2023.Q4 branches.

Workarounds

Remove the Menu Display Widget from pages that reference restricted assets until the patch is deployed.
Reconfigure affected Site Navigation Menus to exclude content requiring granular permissions.
Reduce the exposure surface by limiting portal access to authenticated users with scoped roles.

bash

# Configuration example
# Audit pages that use the Menu Display Widget via the Liferay database
# (run against the Liferay schema; validate before executing in production)
SELECT plid, portletId, instanceId
  FROM PortletPreferences
 WHERE portletId LIKE 'com_liferay_site_navigation_menu_web_portlet_SiteNavigationMenuPortlet%';