diff --git a/apm-agent-plugins/apm-logging-plugin/apm-log4j2-plugin/pom.xml b/apm-agent-plugins/apm-logging-plugin/apm-log4j2-plugin/pom.xml
index 7ce9ef4301..6bd62fb2de 100644
--- a/apm-agent-plugins/apm-logging-plugin/apm-log4j2-plugin/pom.xml
+++ b/apm-agent-plugins/apm-logging-plugin/apm-log4j2-plugin/pom.xml
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@
         <dependency>
             <groupId>org.apache.logging.log4j</groupId>
             <artifactId>log4j-core</artifactId>
-            <version>2.25.2</version>
+            <version>2.25.3</version>
             <scope>provided</scope>
         </dependency>
         <dependency>
diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index 9ae15509a5..2357db5459 100644
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -93,7 +93,7 @@
         <!-- this is the last version of log4j that is compatible with Java 7. Due to a known vulnerability
         (https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-9488#vulnCurrentDescriptionTitle), the SMTP appender is
          excluded from the build and not packaged into the agent artifacts -->
-        <version.log4j>2.12.4</version.log4j>
+        <version.log4j>2.25.3</version.log4j>
         <version.ecs.logging>1.7.0</version.ecs.logging>
         <version.spring>5.0.15.RELEASE</version.spring>
         <version.jetty-server>9.4.11.v20180605</version.jetty-server>