CVE-2026-46726
Camel-Vertx-Websocket: The inbound consumer maps externally-supplied WebSocket query and path parameters into the Exchange without a HeaderFilterStrategy, allowing injection of Camel control headers - enabling server-side request forgery and disclosure of secrets when bridged to an HTTP producer
Description
The camel-vertx-websocket consumer mapped inbound WebSocket query and path parameters into the Camel Exchange header map without applying any HeaderFilterStrategy (VertxWebsocketConsumer.populateExchangeHeaders()). Because nothing blocked the Camel header namespace, a client connecting to the WebSocket endpoint could set Camel-internal control headers - including CamelHttpUri (Exchange.HTTP_URI) - simply by supplying them as query parameters. In a route where the WebSocket consumer feeds a downstream HTTP producer, the injected CamelHttpUri redirects the server-side HTTP request to an attacker-chosen destination (server-side request forgery - for example to an internal service or a cloud metadata endpoint). In addition, the HTTP producer resolves Camel property placeholders on the resulting (attacker-controlled) URI, so placeholders embedded in the injected value - such as an environment-variable reference, an application property, or a vault reference - are resolved to their real values and sent to the attacker, disclosing environment variables, application properties and vault secrets. When the WebSocket endpoint is exposed without authentication, this is reachable by an unauthenticated remote attacker.
Mitigation
Credit
This issue was discovered by Kamalpreet Singh
Notes
The JIRA ticket: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CAMEL-23532 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/23285 (commit 1e776238202edb9d98972cff558e12b53e499647) and backported to camel-4.18.x (commit 88c43e3af36013585b5483c671950f30e5833a5f) and camel-4.14.x (commit 508fc15deca97ba373eb3881a00e220eab9ec428). The fix adds a dedicated VertxWebsocketHeaderFilterStrategy and a headerFilterStrategy endpoint option to camel-vertx-websocket, filtering the Camel header namespace case-insensitively on inbound mapping, so attacker-supplied Camel* / camel* headers are no longer copied into the Exchange. The issue is classified as CWE-20 (Improper Input Validation), with the demonstrated impact being CWE-918 (Server-Side Request Forgery) and CWE-200 (Exposure of Sensitive Information). It belongs to the same Camel header-injection family as CVE-2025-27636, CVE-2025-29891, CVE-2025-30177, CVE-2026-40453, CVE-2026-46454 and CVE-2026-47323, and shares its fix (CAMEL-23532) with the sibling advisories CVE-2026-55993 (camel-atmosphere-websocket) and CVE-2026-55994 (camel-iggy).