CVE-2026-66144 Apache Neethi: Remote PolicyReference fetch lacks resource bounds

What is CVE-2026-66144?

CVE-2026-66144 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Apache Neethi, published on 24 Jul 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Although remote policy references are not retrieved during policy normalization, if they are manually retrieved via the API it can cause a denial of service attack if a huge policy is retrieved. Users are recommended to upgrade to version 3.2.3, which fixes this issue by imposing a default maximum size on data read from remote policy references.

Weakness: CWE-400

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-66144?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Apache Neethi.

How do I fix CVE-2026-66144?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2026-66144 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-66144 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Apache Neethi

• CVE-2026-91863 Apache Neethi: Uncontrolled recursion while parsing crafted WS-Policy documents allows denial of service High 7.5
• CVE-2026-91864 Apache Neethi: Crafted WS-Policy documents bypass element/attribute limits causing memory exhaustion High 7.5
• CVE-2026-91865 Apache Neethi: Crafted policy references cause exponential expansion during normalization leading to denial of service High 7.5
• CVE-2026-91866 Apache Neethi: Crafted policies cause unbounded work during intersection leading to denial of service High 7.5
• CVE-2026-66142 Apache Neethi: Uncontrolled recursion in policy processing High 7.5

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as CLEANSTART-2026-GA88793, GHSA-pjvp-v6mq-82xv.