🔒 Spring4Shell Firewall Defense — Cybersecurity Incident Simulation This project is part of a Cybersecurity Job Simulation I completed in August 2025 through Forage. It focuses on detecting, analyzing, and mitigating a simulated real-world cyberattack involving the Spring4Shell (CVE-2022-22965) vulnerability
🛡️ Spring4Shell Firewall Defense – Cybersecurity Incident Simulation This project is part of a Cybersecurity Job Simulation I completed through Forage in August 2025. It simulates a real-world incident involving the Spring4Shell (CVE-2022-22965) vulnerability and demonstrates how a custom firewall can detect and mitigate exploitation attempts.
📌 Project Overview The goal of this simulation was to identify and block malicious traffic targeting a vulnerable web application endpoint. I developed a custom Python-based HTTP firewall that monitors and filters incoming requests, detecting known exploit patterns and stopping them in real time.
🧰 Key Features 🔍 Threat Detection: Analyzes HTTP POST data for suspicious keys and payloads.
🔐 Firewall Defense: Blocks malicious requests using pattern-based rules.
💣 Exploit Prevention: Detects attempted remote code execution via Runtime.getRuntime() and similar signatures.
📈 Logging & Monitoring: Displays blocked attempts and reasons for blocking in the terminal.
🖼️ Demo In the first screenshot, a suspicious POST request attempts to exploit the Spring4Shell vulnerability by injecting a payload with Runtime.getRuntime(). The custom firewall immediately detects this pattern and blocks the request, returning a 403 Forbidden response — effectively stopping a potential Remote Code Execution (RCE) attempt.
In contrast, the second screenshot shows a safe POST request with harmless data (username=test) sent to the server. The firewall recognizes it as safe and allows the request to pass through, returning a standard 200 OK response. This highlights the firewall’s ability to distinguish between normal and malicious activity with precision.
🧪 Technologies Used Python (firewall implementation)
http.server module for simulating vulnerable server
curl for simulating POST requests
Custom signature detection logic
📋 What I Did Analyzed a simulated Spring4Shell attack targeting a JSP endpoint.
Identified suspicious payloads in POST data.
Wrote a custom firewall (firewall_server.py) to detect and block malicious requests.
Validated the firewall by simulating attacks (see screenshot).
Documented the incident with a detailed postmortem analysis.
📜 Certificate RNhbu8QnDzthwynEf_M6JGAwZ52SMusMEcK_cKqCaSyzkPoWXRdg5_1754434963290_completion_certificate.pdf
