CVE-2026-42809 PUBLISHED

Apache Polaris: staged table creation could vend storage credentials for unvalidated locations

Assigner: apache
Reserved: 30.04.2026 Published: 04.05.2026 Updated: 04.05.2026

Apache Polaris can issue broad temporary ("vended") storage credentials during staged table creation before the effective table location has been validated or durably reserved. Those temporary credentials are meant to limit the scope of accessible table data and metadata, but this scope limitation becomes attacker- directed because the attacker can choose a reachable target location.

In the confirmed variant, if the caller supplies a custom location during stage create and requests credential vending, Apache Polaris uses that location to construct delegated storage credentials immediately. The stage-create path itself neither runs the normal location validation nor the overlap checks before those credentials are issued.

Closely related to that, the staged-create flow also accepts write.data.path / write.metadata.path in the request properties and feeds those location overrides into the same effective table location set used for credential vending. Those fields are secondary to the main custom-location exploit, but they are still attacker-influenced location inputs that should be validated before any credentials are issued.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H
CVSS Score: 9.4

Product Status

Vendor Apache Software Foundation
Product Apache Polaris
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 0 to 1.4.1 (excl.)

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-862 Missing Authorization CWE
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation CWE