[HIGH] CVE-2026-42402 — CVSS 7.5 (May 1, 2026)

A HIGH-severity vulnerability identified as CVE-2026-42402 has been published on May 1, 2026 with a CVSS base score of 7.5. The vulnerability affects Apache Neethi. This security advisory provides a detailed breakdown of the vulnerability, its potential impact, weakness classification, and actionable steps to protect your systems.

Vulnerability Details

CVE ID: CVE-2026-42402
Severity: HIGH
CVSS Score: 7.5
Published: May 1, 2026
Affected Product: Apache Neethi
Weakness (CWE): CWE-400

Technical Description

Apache Neethi is vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack through algorithmic complexity in policy normalization. Specially crafted WS-Policy documents can trigger an exponential Cartesian cross-product expansion during the normalization process, causing unbounded memory allocation that exhausts the JVM heap. This occurs when the normalization process generates an excessive number of policy alternatives without bounds, leading to runtime memory exhaustion. Users should upgrade to 3.2.2 which limits the maximum number of normalized policy alternatives.

Potential Impact

If exploited, this high-severity vulnerability could allow an attacker to cause a denial of service. Organizations running Apache Neethi should treat this as a priority remediation item.

Recommended Action

A patch or vendor advisory is available. Take the following steps immediately:

1. Review the vendor advisory linked in the References section below.
2. Identify all instances of the affected software in your environment.
3. Apply the available patch or upgrade to the fixed version as soon as possible.
4. If patching is not immediately possible, implement compensating controls such as WAF rules, network segmentation, or disabling the affected feature.
5. Monitor your systems for signs of exploitation using your SIEM or IDS/IPS.

View full details on NVD →

References

• Mailing List, Vendor Advisory
• Mailing List, Third Party Advisory

Related Security Advisories

• [HIGH] CVE-2026-6022 — CVSS 7.5 (April 22, 2026) — HIGH / CVSS 7.5
• [HIGH] CVE-2026-7164 — CVSS 7.5 (April 30, 2026) — HIGH / CVSS 7.5
• [HIGH] CVE-2026-22070 — CVSS 7.1 (April 30, 2026) — HIGH / CVSS 7.1