CVE-2026-91863
Description
A flaw was found in Apache Neethi. A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted WS-Policy document containing deeply nested policy elements. This crafted document can bypass the parser's nesting-depth limit, leading to uncontrolled recursion that exhausts the thread stack. Successful exploitation results in a denial of service, causing the parser to crash.
Statement
An availability-only denial of service flaw rated IMPORTANT (CVSS 7.5, AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H) was found in Apache Neethi, a WS-Policy parsing library shipped in Red Hat middleware products including Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, Red Hat build of Apache Camel, Red Hat Single Sign-On, and Red Hat JBoss Fuse. A remote, unauthenticated attacker, without requiring any user interaction, could send a specially crafted WS-Policy document containing deeply nested policy elements that bypasses the parser's nesting-depth limit. The resulting uncontrolled recursion exhausts the thread stack and crashes the parser, causing a denial of service. Confidentiality and integrity are not impacted. Red Hat is handling the affected product streams under delegated resolution: for actively maintained streams a fix is being pursued, streams in which the vulnerable code is not in the execute path or the component is not present were determined not to be affected, and for older maintenance-phase streams a fix will not be provided.
Mitigation
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability. The upstream Apache Neethi project has addressed this issue in version 3.2.4; users of affected Red Hat products should apply updated product releases containing the fixed component through their standard update channels when they become available.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 7.5 | N/A | 7.5 |
| Attack Vector | Network | N/A | Network |
| Attack Complexity | Low | N/A | Low |
| Privileges Required | None | N/A | None |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | None |
| Scope | Unchanged | N/A | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | None | N/A | None |
| Integrity Impact | None | N/A | None |
| Availability Impact | High | N/A | High |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory); DoS: Amplification
An infinite loop will cause unexpected consumption of resources, such as CPU cycles or memory. The software's operation may slow down, or cause a long time to respond.
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