CVE-2026-82180
Authorisation is reduced to two string comparisons on attacker-supplied data: the DN-qualifier must equal "sy" or "op", and the cloud-name part of the CN must match the server's.
Does this matter?
High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.34%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.
Description
In Eclipse Arrowhead versions from 5.0.0 to 5.2.1 when the MQTT API is enabled with the certificate authentication policy, CertificateMqttFilter parses an X.509 certificate that the client sends inside the MQTT message payload (the authentication field of MqttRequestTemplate) and treats its Subject DN as the authenticated identity. The certificate is decoded with CertificateFactory.generateCertificate() but its signature is never verified and its issuer chain is never validated against any trust store. Authorisation is reduced to two string comparisons on attacker-supplied data: the DN-qualifier must equal "sy" or "op", and the cloud-name part of the CN must match the server's. Both values are public (the cloud name is in the server's own TLS certificate). An attacker who can publish to the MQTT broker can therefore mint a self-signed certificate with CN=Sysop.<cloud>.<org>.arrowhead.eu, dnQualifier=op, send it as the authentication field, and be authenticated as the cloud's system operator with isSysOp == true. This passes the downstream ManagementServiceMqttFilter (request.isSysOp() → allowed) and gives full management access over MQTT. The HTTP CertificateFilter is not affected — it reads the certificate from jakarta.servlet.request.X509Certificate, which Tomcat populates only after a successful mTLS handshake against the configured trust store.
- CVSS 4.0
- 9.5 CRITICALCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:N/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/M
- EPSS
- 0.34% probability · 27th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-290, CWE-295
- Source
- emo@eclipse.org
EPSS 0.3% since 26 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.