CVE-2026-46592
Improper Input Validation, Unintended Proxy or Intermediary ('Confused Deputy') vulnerability in Apache Camel CXF SOAP component. The camel-cxf producer selects which SOAP operation to invoke on the backend service from the operationName (and operationNamespace) Exchange header, whose constant values (CxfConstants.OPERATION_NAME / OPERATION_NAMESPACE) were the plain strings operationName / operationNamespace. Because these names do not start with the Camel / camel prefix, HttpHeaderFilterStrategy - which blocks only the Camel header namespace on the HTTP boundary - let them pass from an inbound HTTP request straight into the Exchange. In a route that bridges an HTTP consumer (for example platform-http) into a cxf: producer, any HTTP client could therefore set the operationName header and have CxfProducer resolve and invoke a different WSDL operation than the route intended - for example replacing a read operation with a destructive one - against the backend SOAP service (a confused-deputy redirection). The constant is defined in the shared camel-cxf-common module, so the same non-prefixed names also applied to camel-cxfrs. No credentials are required when the bridging consumer is unauthenticated. This issue affects Apache Camel: from 4.0.0 before 4.14.8, from 4.15.0 before 4.18.3, from 4.19.0 before 4.21.0. Users are recommended to upgrade to version 4.21.0, which fixes the issue. If users are on the 4.14.x LTS releases stream, then they are suggested to upgrade to 4.14.8. If users are on the 4.18.x releases stream, then they are suggested to upgrade to 4.18.3. After upgrading, the operation-selection headers are named CamelCxfOperationName / CamelCxfOperationNamespace and are filtered at transport boundaries; see the 4.21 upgrade guide for the cross-transport carrier-header pattern. For deployments that cannot upgrade immediately, do not select the CXF operation from untrusted input: strip the operationName and operationNamespace headers from any untrusted ingress before the cxf: producer and set the operation from a trusted source in the route.
What this means
- Exposure
- Exploitable remotely over the network, without authentication and with no action from the victim.
- Impact
- An attacker can read sensitive data.
- Weakness
- The application accepts input without checking it, opening the door to unintended behaviour.
- Likelihood
- Its EPSS score stays low: nothing points to imminent exploitation, which is no reason to leave it unpatched.
What to doFold into the next patch cycle. Start with the instances exposed to the internet.
Read automatically from the CVSS vector, the weakness type (CWE) and the EPSS score. The technical description above remains the one published by NIST.