Skip to content

Apollo ConfigService access key authentication bypass via non-canonical appId matching

High
nobodyiam published GHSA-4w3q-qpfq-v992 Jul 12, 2026

Software

Apollo ConfigService

Affected versions

<= 2.5.1

Patched versions

2.5.2

Description

Summary

Apollo ConfigService may allow unauthorized access to configuration data when AccessKey / management key authentication is enabled and ConfigService accepts a non-canonical appId variant during authentication while downstream request handling resolves it to the protected app.

Details

ConfigService extracts appId from configuration and notification requests and uses the extracted value to look up available AccessKey secrets. If the extracted appId is a non-canonical variant that does not exactly match the AccessKey cache key, ConfigService may treat the request as having no available secrets and allow it to continue without signature verification.

This can happen when downstream release lookup still matches the real appId under database collations that treat the values as equivalent. Examples include accent variants under accent-insensitive collations, or trailing-space variants under PAD SPACE collations.

Impact

An unauthenticated remote attacker may read configuration data from affected ConfigService endpoints when AccessKey / management key authentication is enabled for the target app and the deployment database collation treats a non-canonical appId variant as equivalent to the real appId.

Component scope

This advisory affects Apollo ConfigService server deployments only. It does not affect Maven client libraries such as com.ctrip.framework.apollo:apollo-core, com.ctrip.framework.apollo:apollo-client, or com.ctrip.framework.apollo:apollo-openapi when they are used only as client-side dependencies. The Maven parent POM com.ctrip.framework.apollo:apollo and the client libraries are not the vulnerable runtime component.

Affected endpoints

The primary impact is on ConfigService configuration read endpoints under /configs and /configfiles. Notification endpoints using appId parameters are also hardened as defense-in-depth.

Status

Fixed in Apollo 2.5.2. Users should upgrade to Apollo 2.5.2 or later.

Related advisory

The raw config file endpoint parsing issue originally described in this advisory has been split into GHSA-h4pc-58cc-hc95 so each independently fixable vulnerability can receive its own CVE.

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

CVE ID

CVE-2026-59954

Weaknesses

Improper Input Validation

The product receives input or data, but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input has the properties that are required to process the data safely and correctly. Learn more on MITRE.

Improper Authentication

When an actor claims to have a given identity, the product does not prove or insufficiently proves that the claim is correct. Learn more on MITRE.

Credits