CVE-2026-91867 Apache Neethi: Remote policy fetch lacks a total timeout, allowing a slow server to hang the request indefinitely

What is CVE-2026-91867?

CVE-2026-91867 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Apache Neethi, published on 21 Sep 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

When Neethi fetches a remote policy reference, it only limits the time per read, not the whole transfer, so a server that trickles bytes slowly can keep the fetch alive indefinitely and tie up the calling thread (denial of service). Users are recommended to upgrade to version 3.2.4, which fixes this issue.

Weakness: CWE-400

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-91867?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Apache Neethi.

How do I fix CVE-2026-91867?

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-2026-91867 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-91867 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 GHSA-8xvj-2pjr-73jq.