CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2026-42811 — Apache Polaris security vulnerability

In plain terms, Apache Polaris is supposed to issue short-lived GCS credentials that only work for one table's files, but a crafted namespace or table name can cause those credentials to work across the configured bucket instead. Apache Polaris builds Google Cloud Storage downscoped credentials by creating a Credential Access Boundary (CAB) with CEL conditions that are intended to restrict access to the requested table's storage path. The relevant CEL string is built from the bucket name and the table path. That table path is derived from namespace and table identifiers. In current code, that path appears to be inserted into the CEL expression without escaping. As a result, a namespace or table identifier containing a single quote and other URI-safe CEL fragments can break out of the intended quoted string and change the meaning of the CEL condition. In private testing against Polaris 1.4.0 on real Google Cloud Storage, it was confirmed that Polaris accepted a crafted identifier and returned delegated GCS credentials whose CEL path restriction had effectively collapsed. Those delegated credentials could then: - list another table's object prefix; - read another table's metadata co…

Severity

Critical

CVSS

9.9 (3.1)

Published

2026-05-04

CISA KEV

Not currently listed

Ecosystem

software/application

Weaknesses

CWE-20, CWE-917