Apache WSS4J remembers the Nonce of each UsernameToken it accepts, so a captured token cannot be reused. It stored the Nonce as raw base64 text, but authentication decodes that text and uses the bytes.The same bytes can be written as base64 in several ways. An attacker who captured an authenticated request could re-send it with a space added to the Nonce: the password digest still verified, but the token no longer matched the remembered one, so the replay was accepted. Since a UsernameToken does not cover the message body, the captured token could then be reused on requests of the attacker's choosing until it expired. Affects deployments with a nonce replay cache configured, as Apache CXF has by default, and only tokens using a password digest. The cache is now keyed on the decoded Nonce. Users are recommended to upgrade to versions 4.0.2 or 3.0.6 or 2.4.4, which fix this issue.
In the WSS4J streaming (StAX) code, a signature reference using the WS-Security STR-Transform leaves an internal "inside signed content" flag permanently set. The WS-SecurityPolicy enforcer uses that flag to decide whether an element needs checking, so it stops evaluating SignedParts and SignedElements for the rest of the message. A policy requiring the SOAP Body to be signed is then satisfied even when the Body carries no signature, removing the protection against XML Signature Wrapping. Signature verification itself is unaffected. The DOM code is not affected. Users are recommended to upgrade to versions 4.0.2 or 3.0.6 or 2.4.4 which fix this issue.
In the StAX streaming WS-SecurityPolicy validator, certain relative or unsupported XPath expressions can be converted into paths that never match the actual XML element path. A remote SOAP peer may therefore send a required element without the expected signature or encryption. Users are recommended to upgrade to versions 4.0.2 or 3.0.6 or 2.4.4, which fix this issue.
An authentication bypass in the DOM security processor in Apache WSS4J allows unauthenticated remote attackers to forge authenticated SOAP messages via a crafted unsigned SAML sender-vouches assertion containing an attacker-controlled key.
Users are recommended to upgrade to versions 4.0.2 or 3.0.6 or 2.4.4, which fix this issue.
An authentication bypass in the DOM security processor in Apache WSS4J allows unauthenticated remote attackers to forge authenticated SOAP messages via a crafted unsigned SAML sender-vouches assertion containing an attacker-controlled key.
Users are recommended to upgrade to versions 4.0.2 or 3.0.6 or 2.4.4, which fix this issue.
WSS4J EncryptedHeader child confusion could promote an attacker-controlled plaintext element as the decrypted header, leading to incorrect confidentiality coverage and possible policy bypass. Users are recommended to upgrade to versions 4.0.2 or 3.0.6 or 2.4.4, which fix this issue.
An integer overflow in WSS4J's DER bounds check lets an oversized allocation pass validation. An unauthenticated attacker can send a SOAP message carrying an X.509 certificate whose SubjectKeyIdentifier extension declares a length of 0x7FFFFFFF; WSS4J decodes this while resolving the signature's key reference, before the message is authenticated, so an eleven-byte extension triggers a 2 GB allocation. Repeated requests exhaust server memory. Users are recommended to upgrade to versions 4.0.2 or 3.0.6 or 2.4.4, which fix this issue.
Apache WSS4J accepted attacker-controlled derived-key lengths and offsets without adequate bounds. This could permit cryptographically weak keys or excessive CPU and memory consumption when processing crafted WS-Security messages. The fixes enforce a minimum key length of 16 bytes, a maximum length of 512 bytes, and a maximum offset of 4096 bytes. Users are recommended to upgrade to versions 4.0.2 or 3.0.6 or 2.4.4, which fix this issue.
Severity: important
Affected versions:
- Apache WSS4J 4.0.0 before 4.0.2 - Apache WSS4J 3.0.0 before 3.0.6 - Apache WSS4J before 2.4.4
Description:
An integer overflow in WSS4J's DER bounds check lets an oversized allocation pass validation. An unauthenticated attacker can send a SOAP message carrying an X.509 certificate whose SubjectKeyIdentifier extension declares a length of 0x7FFFFFFF; WSS4J decodes this while resolving the signature's key reference, before the message is authenticated, so an eleven-byte extension triggers a 2 GB allocation. Repeated requests exhaust server memory. Users are recommended to upgrade to versions 4.0.2 or 3.0.6 or 2.4.4, which fix this issue.
References:
https://ws.apache.org/ https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-95616
Severity: moderate
Affected versions:
- Apache WSS4J 4.0.0 before 4.0.2 - Apache WSS4J 3.0.0 before 3.0.6 - Apache WSS4J before 2.4.4
Description:
Apache WSS4J remembers the Nonce of each UsernameToken it accepts, so a captured token cannot be reused. It stored the Nonce as raw base64 text, but authentication decodes that text and uses the bytes.The same bytes can be written as base64 in several ways. An attacker who captured an authenticated request could re-send it with a space added to the Nonce: the password digest still verified, but the token no longer matched the remembered one, so the replay was accepted. Since a UsernameToken does not cover the message body, the captured token could then be reused on requests of the attacker's choosing until it expired. Affects deployments with a nonce replay cache configured, as Apache CXF has by default, and only tokens using a password digest. The cache is now keyed on the decoded Nonce. Users are recommended to upgrade to versions 4.0.2 or 3.0.6 or 2.4.4, which fix this issue.
Credit:
Reported by n0mi1k (finder)
References:
https://ws.apache.org/ https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-92899
A flaw was found in velocity. An attacker, able to modify Velocity templates, may execute arbitrary Java code or run arbitrary system commands with the same privileges as the account running the Servlet container. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data confidentiality and integrity as well as system availability.
Apache WSS4J 1.6.5 contained a countermeasure for Bleichenbacher's attack on XML Encryption, where the PKCS#1 v1.5 Key Transport Algorithm is used to encrypt symmetric keys as part of WS-Security. In particular, the fix avoided leaking information on whether decryption failed when decrypting the encrypted key or decrypting the message data.
However, it is still possible to craft a message such that an attacker can tell where the decryption failure took place, and hence WSS4J is vulnerable to the original attack.
See here for more information on the original fix for WSS4J 1.6.5:
http://cxf.apache.org/note-on-cve-2011-2487.html https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showbug.cgi?id=CVE-2011-2487
This has been fixed in revision:
http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?view=revision&revision=1621329
A flaw was found in JBoss web services where the services used a weak symmetric encryption protocol, PKCS#1 v1.5. An attacker could use this weakness in chosen-ciphertext attacks to recover the symmetric key and conduct further attacks.
Apache WSS4J as used by Apache CXF with the TransportBinding does not, by default, properly enforce all security requirements associcated with SAML SubjectConfirmation methods. Web service endpoints, secured by WSS4j, that rely on SAML for authentication are considered vulnerable to types of spoofing attacks.
Upstream Issues:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/WSS-510 https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/WSS-511 https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/WSS-511
Upstream Commits:
http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?view=revision&revision=1624308 http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?view=revision&revision=1624287 http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?view=revision&revision=1624262
References:
http://cxf.apache.org/security-advisories.data/CVE-2014-3623.txt.asc
Apache WSS4J before 1.6.17 and 2.x before 2.0.2 allows remote attackers to bypass the requireSignedEncryptedDataElements configuration via a vectors related to "wrapping attacks."