CVE-2026-85254 Apache Camel
| Affected software | Apache Camel |
|---|---|
| Severity | 6.5 Medium CVSS 3.1 |
| Weakness | CWE-178 |
| Published | 19 Oct 2026 |
| Updated | 3 Nov 2026 |
Published 25 days ago. NVD often adds the list of affected products days or weeks after a CVE is published, and the other sources we check lag too. The scope and status here may change.
Description
Improper Handling of Case Sensitivity vulnerability in Apache Camel Platform HTTP component. This issue affects Apache Camel: from 4.0.0 before 4.18.5, from 4.19.0 before 4.22.1. The guard that prevents a request header being reflected into the response compared header names case sensitively, while HTTP header names are case insensitive. A caller could therefore defeat the suppression simply by varying the case of the header name. HTTP/2 makes the problem unconditional rather than optional: the protocol requires header names to be lowercase on the wire, so the comparison never matched and the suppression was inert for every request on an HTTP/2 connection. The consequence is that content the caller chose is echoed back in the response, which is the basis for response-splitting and cache-poisoning style attacks against whatever sits in front of the Camel endpoint. Upgrade to Apache Camel 4.23.0, which fixes the issue. Users on the 4.18.x LTS releases stream should upgrade to 4.18.5. Users on the 4.22.x LTS releases stream should upgrade to 4.22.1. Request header names are now compared case insensitively, so the suppression holds regardless of casing and works under HTTP/2. For deployments that cannot upgrade immediately, strip the headers in question in front of the Camel endpoint, or remove them from the response in the route rather than relying on the built-in suppression.
Exploitation status
No public exploit
No exploit has been reported in the sources we check. The 1 repository below are public GitHub repositories with fewer than 5 stars.
Exploitation status
- CISA KEV not listed
- VulnCheck KEV not listed
- CISA Vulnrichment exploitation: none
- Indexed PoC 1 indexed, none at 5+ stars
- EPSS 0.68% chance in 30 days
| Index | Artifact | Stars | First seen |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub PoC | Reproducer for CVE-2026-85254 — Apache Camel camel-platform-http request-header echo suppression bypass (CWE-178); Spring Boot + Quarkus, affected vs fixed | 2026-10-19 |
Waratek protection
Within Waratek scope. In the sources we check, nobody has published exploit code for this CVE or reported it being exploited.
A public code fix exists: apache/camel #25831.
- Protection none
- Action unverified
- Review automated Upstream data
- Record active
| Decided by | Medium or Low severity, no CISA or VulnCheck KEV listing, no PoC clearing the evidence bar, no CISA verdict, no Oracle advisory |
|---|---|
| Finding | This CVE is MEDIUM severity, is not listed in CISA KEV or VulnCheck KEV, has no public exploit or PoC in any indexed source, carries no CISA Vulnrichment finding of a demonstrated exploit, and is not part of an Oracle Critical Patch Update. None of the signals that would put it in front of an engineer is present, and the volume of CVEs below that bar is too great to take one at a time, so no rule is written for it. This is a decision about what we act on, not a finding that the CVE is harmless — a patch may well be derivable, and a low-severity defect can still be one link in a longer chain. |
| Candidate fix | https://github.com/apache/camel/pull/25831 : a pull request: the change under review |
Affected software and releases
Products and versions
1 product, 2 version entries| Source | Vendor | Product | Scheme | Affected versions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| nvd | apache | camel | generic | ≥ 4.0.0 and < 4.18.5 · ≥ 4.19.0 and < 4.22.1 |
References
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://github.com/apache/camel/pull/25831 | pr |
| https://camel.apache.org/security/CVE-2026-85254.html | Mitigation, Patch, Vendor Advisory |
| https://github.com/apache/camel/pull/25940 | Issue Tracking, Patch |
| https://github.com/apache/camel/pull/25942 | Issue Tracking, Patch |
| https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CAMEL-24453 | Issue Tracking, Vendor Advisory |
Timeline
Timeline
| Published | 2026-10-19 | By the CVE Program. |
|---|---|---|
| NVD record modified | 2026-11-03 | NVD's own last-modified date for this record. |