CVE-2025-27636
Published: 09 March 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-27636 is a medium-severity Improper Handling of Case Sensitivity (CWE-178) vulnerability in Apache Camel. Its CVSS base score is 5.6 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked in the top 3.1% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-10 (Information Input Validation) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Requires timely patching of the Apache Camel header filter flaw by upgrading to fixed versions (4.10.2, 4.8.5, 3.22.4), directly eliminating the bypass and injection vulnerability.
Mandates validation of incoming HTTP headers to detect and block malicious Camel-specific headers with case variations that bypass the default filter and alter component behaviors.
Restricts unauthorized classes of input data such as forged Camel headers, preventing injection attacks on vulnerable components like camel-bean, camel-jms, and camel-exec.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
The vulnerability allows remote attackers to exploit public-facing Apache Camel applications (via HTTP components like camel-servlet, camel-jetty, etc.) by bypassing header filters and injecting malicious headers to alter behaviors in components such as camel-bean, camel-jms, and camel-exec.
NVD Description
Bypass/Injection vulnerability in Apache Camel components under particular conditions. This issue affects Apache Camel: from 4.10.0 through <= 4.10.1, from 4.8.0 through <= 4.8.4, from 3.10.0 through <= 3.22.3. Users are recommended to upgrade to version 4.10.2 for 4.10.x LTS,…
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4.8.5 for 4.8.x LTS and 3.22.4 for 3.x releases. This vulnerability is present in Camel's default incoming header filter, that allows an attacker to include Camel specific headers that for some Camel components can alter the behaviours such as the camel-bean component, to call another method on the bean, than was coded in the application. In the camel-jms component, then a malicious header can be used to send the message to another queue (on the same broker) than was coded in the application. This could also be seen by using the camel-exec component The attacker would need to inject custom headers, such as HTTP protocols. So if you have Camel applications that are directly connected to the internet via HTTP, then an attacker could include malicious HTTP headers in the HTTP requests that are send to the Camel application. All the known Camel HTTP component such as camel-servlet, camel-jetty, camel-undertow, camel-platform-http, and camel-netty-http would be vulnerable out of the box. In these conditions an attacker could be able to forge a Camel header name and make the bean component invoking other methods in the same bean. In terms of usage of the default header filter strategy the list of components using that is: * camel-activemq * camel-activemq6 * camel-amqp * camel-aws2-sqs * camel-azure-servicebus * camel-cxf-rest * camel-cxf-soap * camel-http * camel-jetty * camel-jms * camel-kafka * camel-knative * camel-mail * camel-nats * camel-netty-http * camel-platform-http * camel-rest * camel-sjms * camel-spring-rabbitmq * camel-stomp * camel-tahu * camel-undertow * camel-xmpp The vulnerability arises due to a bug in the default filtering mechanism that only blocks headers starting with "Camel", "camel", or "org.apache.camel.". Mitigation: You can easily work around this in your Camel applications by removing the headers in your Camel routes. There are many ways of doing this, also globally or per route. This means you could use the removeHeaders EIP, to filter out anything like "cAmel, cAMEL" etc, or in general everything not starting with "Camel", "camel" or "org.apache.camel.".
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-27636 is a bypass and injection vulnerability in the default incoming header filter of Apache Camel, affecting versions 4.10.0 through 4.10.1, 4.8.0 through 4.8.4, and 3.10.0 through 3.22.3. The flaw stems from the filter only blocking headers starting with "Camel", "camel", or "org.apache.camel.", enabling attackers to inject Camel-specific headers with case variations that alter component behaviors. Vulnerable components using the default filter include camel-bean, camel-jms, camel-exec, and others such as camel-activemq, camel-http, camel-jetty, camel-kafka, camel-netty-http, camel-platform-http, camel-servlet, camel-undertow, and more.
Attackers can exploit this remotely with no privileges by injecting malicious headers through protocols like HTTP into Camel applications directly exposed to the internet. For instance, HTTP components such as camel-servlet, camel-jetty, camel-undertow, camel-platform-http, and camel-netty-http are vulnerable out-of-the-box, allowing attackers to forge header names that cause camel-bean to invoke unintended methods on beans, camel-jms to redirect messages to different queues on the same broker, or similar manipulations in camel-exec. The CVSS v3.1 base score is 5.6 (AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L), reflecting moderate impact with high attack complexity.
Apache Camel advisories recommend upgrading to fixed versions: 4.10.2 for the 4.10.x LTS branch, 4.8.5 for 4.8.x LTS, and 3.22.4 for 3.x releases. As a workaround, applications can mitigate by removing suspicious headers in Camel routes using the removeHeaders EIP to filter variations like "cAmel" or "cAMEL", or generally stripping headers not starting with the protected prefixes; this can be applied globally or per route. Details are available in the official advisory at https://camel.apache.org/security/CVE-2025-27636.html and related JIRA ticket CAMEL-21828.
Details
- CWE(s)