CVE-2026-105869

published 2026-10-21

CVE-2026-105869: Apache Pulsar's MultiRolesTokenAuthorizationProvider authorizes a client with all roles listed in a claim of its JSON Web Token (JWT). The provider is intended…

Priority P2 66 critical 9.2 CVSS 4.0

AV N AC L AT P PR N UI N VC H VI H VA H SC N SI N SA N E X CR X IR X AR X MAV X MAC X MAT X MPR X MUI X MVC X MVI X MVA X MSC X MSI X MSA X S X AU X R X V X RE X U X

Apache Pulsar's MultiRolesTokenAuthorizationProvider authorizes a client with all roles listed in a claim of its JSON Web Token (JWT). The provider is intended for use with token authentication, which verifies the token before authorization. The provider did not verify the token itself: it parsed the token's claims with the signature removed and trusted that authentication had already checked it.

When authentication and authorization are enabled with a non-empty anonymousUserRole setting, some HTTP requests whose credentials fail authentication are not rejected, but are handled as requests of the anonymous user role. For the broker's HTTP endpoints, such as the admin REST API, this fallback applies to requests that do not name an authentication method and requires strictAuthMethod to be false (the default) where that setting is available. For the WebSocket API, failed credentials can also fall back to the anonymous user role; this path does not enforce strictAuthMethod. The authentication data kept for such a request still contained the request's Authorization header. MultiRolesTokenAuthorizationProvider then read the bearer token from that header without verifying its signature and authorized the request with the roles in the token's role claim.

As a result, in deployments that use MultiRolesTokenAuthorizationProvider together with a non-empty anonymousUserRole and that permit this fallback, an unauthenticated client can send an HTTP request, for example to the admin REST API or the WebSocket API, with a forged or unsigned token that lists arbitrary roles, and be authorized with those roles. The impact can include super-user access when the token lists a role configured in superUserRoles, allowing the client to read and change tenants, namespaces, topics, permissions and broker configuration. No valid credentials are required.

Deployments are not affected if they use the default authorization provider (PulsarAuthorizationProvider) or another authorization provid

Affected

2 ranges

Vendor	Product	Version range	Fixed in
apache_software_foundation	apache_pulsar	>= 2.8.1 < 4.0.14	4.0.14
apache_software_foundation	apache_pulsar	>= 4.1.0 < 4.2.5	4.2.5

Stop checking back — get the weekly exploitation signal.

Every Monday: what got weaponized or added to CISA KEV in the last seven days — each CVE cross-linked to its PoC, Nuclei template, and detection rule. Free, one email a week, unsubscribe in one click.

CWE-347