CVE-2026-54225 — cxf
HIGHCVE-2026-54225 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-770 vulnerability. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Apache CXF: Denial of Service attack via large attachments
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-54225.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Description
Apache CXF allows to control the maximum attachment size via the "attachment-max-size". Prior to Apache CXF 4.2.3 and 4.1.8 and 3.6.12, there was no default placed on this size, meaning that a denial of service attack is possible if the user doesn't explicitly set the limit. Users should update to Apache CXF 4.2.3 or 4.1.8 or 3.6.12 which fixes this problem by imposing a default attachment size limit of 50mb.
Affected Products
cxfapacheDetection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Fix
Upgrade the affected component to the fixed release for CVE-2026-54225, or apply your distribution's backported patch — distro builds are often patched at an older version number, so check your vendor's advisory rather than the upstream version alone.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-54225 in your dependencies?
Find it across your dependency tree, including transitive dependencies.