Daily Insight: Supply Chain | React2Shell Proves Framework Defaults Are Attack Surface

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Signal CVE-2025-55182 (React2Shell), CVSS 10.0, exposed unauthenticated RCE through default React Server Component behavior. Per Wiz, 39% of cloud environments contained vulnerable instances. Applications were exploitable even without explicit server-side logic, inheriting attack surface through framework defaults. Exploitation consistent with China-nexus activity began within hours of disclosure, per AWS threat intelligence.

Assumption Retired "Framework defaults are safe defaults." React Server Components were designed for performance, not adversarial input handling. The serialization layer that enables server-side rendering also enables unauthenticated RCE. Organizations inherited attack surface they never explicitly opted into.

Insight Modern frameworks blur the boundary between trusted internal logic and untrusted external input. React2Shell is not a coding mistake. It is an architectural assumption failure: the server runtime was never built to handle untrusted input, but the feature set invited it anyway.

Unresolved Edge How many organizations can enumerate which applications in their environment use React Server Components, and which of those were deployed before the organization understood the risk?