GHSA-h6w7-qmcm-q6xr: Maven/com.rabbitmq:amqp-client vulnerability
Summary When property-file/Map-based ConnectionFactory setup fails while parsing the uri key, the library wraps the underlying exception with the raw connection string — including the plaintext username and password — baked verbatim into the new exception's message.
Details ConnectionFactoryConfigurator.load(ConnectionFactory, Map<String,String>, String) (src/main/java/com/rabbitmq/client/ConnectionFactoryConfigurator.java, lines 142-155):
String uri = properties.get(prefix + "uri"); if (uri != null) { try { cf.setUri(uri); } catch (URISyntaxException e) { throw new IllegalArgumentException("Error while setting AMQP URI: " + uri, e); } catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e) { throw new IllegalArgumentException("Error while setting AMQP URI: " + uri, e); } catch (KeyManagementException e) { throw new IllegalArgumentException("Error while setting AMQP URI: " + uri, e); } }
uri is the full AMQP URI — amqp(s)://username:password@host:port/vhost — concatenated verbatim into the exception message on any of the three catch branches. No masking/redaction exists anywhere in this class or in ConnectionFactory.setUri(). This is the library's documented Spring-Boot/ops-config entry point (ConnectionFactory.load(...), available since 4.4.0), not obscure internal code.
RabbitMQ's own AMQP URI spec (rabbitmq.com/docs/uri-spec) explicitly warns the password "should avoid leaking... the full URI should not appear in exception messages or log records." A sibling method twenty lines away (ConnectionFactory.setUri(URI)) already avoids this exact mistake for a different malformed-URI case — this path wasn't caught by that same care.
Note: KeyManagementException is declared in the throws clause but not actually reachable via the current setUri(String) → setUri(URI) call chain — the two real, reachable leak surfaces are the URISyntaxException branch (trivial, deterministic, scheme-independent) and the NoSuchAlgorithmException branch (real but narrower — amqps:// only, requires a restricted/FIPS-style default TLS provider).
PoC Map<String, String> props = new HashMap<>(); props.put("uri", "amqp://svc-account:P@ssW0rd With Space!@broker.internal:5672/prod"); ConnectionFactory cf = new ConnectionFactory(); ConnectionFactoryConfigurator.load(cf, props, "");
Throws:
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Error while setting AMQP URI: amqp://svc-account:P@ssW0rd With Space!@broker.internal:5672/prod
A password containing a space is entirely ordinary under common corporate password policies, and java.net.URI rejects such input outright — this isn't a contrived edge case.
Impact Default Spring Boot startup-failure logging, an APM/error tracker, a CI job log, or an engineer pasting a stack trace into an internal or public ticket now holds the plaintext broker password, in a system typically far less access-controlled than wherever the credential is normally stored. Note the underlying URISyntaxException also carries the same string in its own message, chained as the cause of RabbitMQ's IllegalArgumentException — so removing RabbitMQ's own + uri concatenation alone would not fully close this; the raw secret-bearing string also shouldn't be handed to new URI() for error-reporting purposes at all.
Suggested fix: don't include the raw uri string in the wrapped exception's message — redact the userinfo component (or omit the URI entirely) before including it in any exception text.
Affected Software
Remediation
Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.
- Upgrade
Upgrade
maven/com.rabbitmq:amqp-clientto a version that resolves this vulnerability.Fixed in 5.35.0 - Compensating control
When wrapping AMQP URI parsing or TLS errors, do not include the raw URI in exception messages or logs; redact the userinfo component containing the username and password, or omit the URI entirely, and avoid passing the secret-bearing string to new URI() for error-reporting purposes.
Event History
Frequently Asked Questions
Which deployments are exposed to this credential leak?
Applications that configure com.rabbitmq:amqp-client through property-file or Map-based ConnectionFactory configuration and provide credentials in the uri value are exposed when that URI cannot be parsed. The affected URI format can contain a plaintext username and password.
What condition causes the connection string to be included in an error?
The leak occurs when ConnectionFactoryConfigurator.load calls ConnectionFactory.setUri for the configured uri and it throws URISyntaxException, NoSuchAlgorithmException, or KeyManagementException. Each of those paths constructs an IllegalArgumentException containing the complete URI.
How can teams determine whether credentials may already have been exposed?
Review application logs, exception collectors, and other error records for messages beginning with "Error while setting AMQP URI: ". If present, the message may contain the full configured AMQP URI, including plaintext credentials.