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GHSA-5f42-97gr-vfhq

CriticalCVSS 9.6 / 10
Published Sep 23, 2026·Last modified Sep 23, 2026
Affected Components(1)
Maven logoio.moquette/moquette-broker
< 0.18.1
Description

moquette is reachable by untrusted MQTT clients (anonymous by default), so every byte from any client, including pre-authentication, is untrusted. This is a memory-safe JVM: the ceiling is authorization/ACL bypass + denial of service + cross-session integrity, not RCE (I did not find one and do not claim one). Audited at commit da7f719a6bab9829d520b5838e13ea7b1f9be3ef, module broker/.

What a connecting client can do

  1. (Critical) Bypass pattern-based ACLs across tenants. In AuthorizationsCollector.canDoOperation (AuthorizationsCollector.java:116-131, esp. line 123) the clientId/username is substituted raw into a pattern ACL rule and then wildcard-matched, and the clientId is never validated for MQTT wildcard characters +/# at CONNECT (MQTTConnection.processConnect):

Topic substitutedTopic = new Topic(auth.topic.toString().replace("%c", client).replace("%u", username)); if (topic.match(substitutedTopic)) return true;

A client that connects with clientId + turns sensor/%c/# into the filter sensor/+/#, gaining cross-tenant read AND write. (Precondition: pattern ACL rules configured — a common multi-tenant setup.)

  1. (High) Crash the whole broker. SessionEventLoop (SessionEventLoop.java:40-54) catches only InterruptedException and is never restarted (SessionEventLoopGroup), so any uncaught exception on it wedges every co-located client. Trivially reachable inputs: malformed $share/grp SUBSCRIBE (SharedSubscriptionUtils.extractShareName -> StringIndexOutOfBoundsException), deeply nested topic (CTrie recursion -> StackOverflowError), and ACL NPE below. Unbounded subscriptions / retained / in-flight / topic-alias / interceptor state (BrokerInterceptor uses an unbounded queue) also allow OOM; durable stores allow disk exhaustion.

  2. (High) NPE in ACL sink on clientId # (invalid filter sensor/#/# -> null tokens -> Topic.match NPE at Topic.java:173).

  3. (High) Will-message authorization bypass. Last-Will topic is published (PostOffice.publishWill) without canWrite/reserved-topic checks used for normal PUBLISH.

  4. (Medium) Cross-session durable corruption. H2PersistentQueue opens queue_"+clientId and queue_"+clientId+"_meta; client id sensor_meta collides with victim sensor metadata map -> corrupts head/tail.

  5. (Medium) Fail-open if authenticator/authorizator class fails to load -> PermitAll/AcceptAll (Server.java:483-531).

Proof of concept

Source-only, no network; PoCs run on JDK 17:

  • PoCPatternAcl — clientId + gains cross-tenant read/write; clientId # triggers NPE
  • PoCSharedSubCrash — extractShareName("$share/grp") throws StringIndexOutOfBoundsException
  • PoCMapCollision — H2 MVStore collision overwrites victim metadata pointer

Impact

Cross-tenant eavesdropping and injection, whole-broker DoS, unauthorized Will publishes, and cross-session durable corruption.

Remediation

  1. Reject clientId/username containing +/# (and / if structural) at CONNECT; expand %c/%u as literal tokens.
  2. Harden SessionEventLoop (catch Throwable + restart supervision) and validate $share filters.
  3. Apply authorization to Will publishes like normal PUBLISH.
  4. Add resource caps (connections, queues, retained, aliases, interceptor queue) + bounded session expiry.
  5. Separate H2 namespaces and fail closed on auth-class load failure.
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Risk Scores
Base Score
9.6

The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker needs basic access or low-level privileges. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The vulnerability can affect other systems as well, not just the initial system. There is a high impact on the confidentiality of the information. There is a high impact on the integrity of the data.

Threat Intelligence
8.8

Exploitation activity has been observed. Apply available patches or mitigations urgently.

EPSS
0.43%

The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.

Exploit
Not available

We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.

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