Apache Camel Security Advisory - CVE-2026-46453

Apache Camel security advisory: CVE-2026-46453

Severity

MEDIUM

Summary

Camel-Elasticsearch-Rest-Client: Exchange header constants without the Camel prefix bypass inbound HTTP header filtering, allowing untrusted clients to override the Elasticsearch query and operation

Versions affected

From 4.3.0 before 4.14.8, from 4.15.0 before 4.18.3, from 4.19.0 before 4.21.0.

Versions fixed

4.14.8, 4.18.3 and 4.21.0

Description

The camel-elasticsearch-rest-client component reads several Exchange headers to control its behaviour - SEARCH_QUERY (an advanced query body), OPERATION (which Elasticsearch operation to run), INDEX_NAME, INDEX_SETTINGS and ID. The string values of these header constants, defined in ElasticSearchRestClientConstant, are plain unprefixed names ('SEARCH_QUERY', 'OPERATION', 'INDEX_NAME', 'INDEX_SETTINGS', 'ID') rather than the 'Camel'-prefixed names used by every other Camel component (for example CamelSqlQuery, CamelMongoDbCriteria, CamelCqlQuery). Camel's inbound HTTP header filter, HttpHeaderFilterStrategy, blocks only header names that begin with 'Camel' or 'camel'. Because the Elasticsearch header names do not carry that prefix, they pass through the inbound filter unchanged. When a Camel route exposes an HTTP entry point (for example platform-http) in front of an elasticsearch-rest-client producer, an untrusted HTTP client can set these headers directly on its request and override the query and operation that the route author configured: reading every document in the index (SEARCH_QUERY with a match_all query), deleting documents (OPERATION set to Delete together with ID), or exfiltrating selected fields. No credentials are required and the producer reads the headers unconditionally.

Notes

The JIRA ticket: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CAMEL-23508 refers to the various commits that resolved the issue, and have more details. The fix was merged on main in https://github.com/apache/camel/pull/23212 (commit 81f3a625c8853d6dff5fd748a0da9dba259c4076) and backported to camel-4.18.x (commit ff88400e3a95af16e17d553b34d3752d96496c5d, PR #23244) and camel-4.14.x (commit 0a87d31c8d19f59da4a5477bde192cc258ecc5d7, PR #23360). The issue is classified as CWE-20 (Improper Input Validation) and CWE-639 (Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key). It belongs to the same Camel message-header-injection family as CVE-2025-27636, CVE-2025-29891, CVE-2025-30177, CVE-2026-40453 and CVE-2026-47323, all of which stem from Camel components reading inbound message headers that the default HeaderFilterStrategy does not block because the header names do not start with the Camel prefix.

Mitigation

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. The fix renames the camel-elasticsearch-rest-client Exchange header constant string values (ID, SEARCH_QUERY, INDEX_SETTINGS, INDEX_NAME, OPERATION) to carry the Camel prefix (CamelElasticsearchId, CamelElasticsearchSearchQuery, CamelElasticsearchIndexSettings, CamelElasticsearchIndexName, CamelElasticsearchOperation) so that they are blocked by the inbound HttpHeaderFilterStrategy; the Java field names are unchanged. For deployments that cannot upgrade immediately, strip the affected headers from untrusted inbound messages before they reach the producer (for example removeHeader(‘SEARCH_QUERY’), removeHeader(‘OPERATION’), removeHeader(‘INDEX_NAME’), removeHeader(‘INDEX_SETTINGS’) and removeHeader(‘ID’) in front of the elasticsearch-rest-client endpoint), or apply a custom HeaderFilterStrategy that blocks these names.

Credit

This issue was discovered by Yu Bao from PayPal

References

PGP signed advisory data: CVE-2026-46453.txt.asc
Mitre CVE Entry: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-46453