Apache Camel Security Advisory - CVE-2026-46591

Apache Camel security advisory: CVE-2026-46591

Severity

MEDIUM

Summary

Camel-Neo4j: JSON property names from the CamelNeo4jMatchProperties header are interpolated into the Cypher WHERE clause without validation, allowing Cypher injection (incomplete remediation of CVE-2025-66169)

Versions affected

From 4.10.0 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-neo4j producer builds the Cypher WHERE clause for its match/retrieve and delete operations from the CamelNeo4jMatchProperties map. CVE-2025-66169 addressed Cypher injection through the property values by binding them as query parameters ($paramN), but the property names (the JSON keys of that map) were still concatenated into the query string verbatim in Neo4jProducer.retrieveNodes() and deleteNode(). A property name containing Cypher syntax therefore alters the structure of the executed query. Where a route maps untrusted input into the CamelNeo4jMatchProperties map - for example by passing a request body as the match map, or from a consumer that does not filter inbound Camel* headers - an attacker who controls the JSON key names can inject arbitrary Cypher and read, modify or delete any node or relationship in the Neo4j database. The CamelNeo4jMatchProperties header is itself Camel-prefixed and is filtered by the HTTP header-filter strategy, so a plain HTTP client cannot set it directly; the issue is reachable through routes that deliberately or inadvertently carry untrusted data into that header.

Notes

The JIRA ticket: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CAMEL-23528 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/23258 (commit bb4176fe87dc0cc60a5be37a57b69b8c610c1dd2) and backported to camel-4.18.x (commit 865d0b8b99f969e06ec6275b69c72670b5763245) and camel-4.14.x (commit 7881d949c40befcc602016dcce25a2fb38d070ce). The fix adds strict property-name validation (^[A-Za-z_][A-Za-z0-9_]*$) in both Neo4jProducer.retrieveNodes() and deleteNode() before the name is used to build the Cypher WHERE clause, rejecting any non-matching name with an IllegalArgumentException wrapped in Neo4jOperationException. The issue is classified as CWE-943 (Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Data Query Logic) and is an incomplete-remediation follow-on to CVE-2025-66169 (CAMEL-22719), which parameterised the Cypher values but left the property names interpolated.

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. For deployments that cannot upgrade immediately, do not populate the CamelNeo4jMatchProperties map from untrusted input: validate or allow-list the property names (for example against ^[A-Za-z_][A-Za-z0-9_]$) before the Neo4j producer, and ensure that any consumer feeding such a route filters inbound Camel / camel* headers so the match header cannot be supplied by an external sender.

Credit

This issue was discovered by Yu Bao from PayPal

References

PGP signed advisory data: CVE-2026-46591.txt.asc
Mitre CVE Entry: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-46591