Eclipse Foundation Eclipse Vert.x — Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

In Eclipse Vert.x versions up to and including 4.5.29 (4.x branch) and 5.1.4 (5.x branch), DefaultRedirectHandler (vertx-core) propagates all request headers as-is across cross-origin HTTP 30x redirects. Only Content-Length is stripped; no origin comparison (scheme, host, port) is performed before copying headers to the redirect target. As a result, credential headers, including Authorization, Cookie, Proxy-Authorization, and arbitrary custom headers such as X-API-Token, are forwarded to the redirect destination without the caller's knowledge. An attacker who can cause a Vert.x HttpClient to issue a request that is redirected to an attacker-controlled host (for example, by supplying a URL to a webhook dispatcher, image proxy, or microservice URL fetcher) can capture bearer tokens, basic-auth credentials, session cookies, and API keys attached to the original request.

The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.

An attacker operating through a network path may attempt exploitation without authentication or user interaction. If successful, the issue may cause the confidentiality, integrity or availability impact described by the vendor.