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NationalSecurityAgency/emissary has an incomplete fix for CVE-2026-35571

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Oct 30, 2026 in NationalSecurityAgency/emissary • Updated Oct 30, 2026

Package

maven gov.nsa.emissary:emissary (Maven)

Affected versions

< 8.51.0

Patched versions

8.51.0

Description

Summary

The URL validation regex ^(https?:/)?/.* added to emissary's NavAction.java allows protocol-relative URLs (//evil.com/...) and single-slash scheme variants (http:/evil.com) to bypass validation, enabling SSRF and open redirect attacks.

Affected Package

  • Ecosystem: Maven
  • Package: NationalSecurityAgency/emissary
  • Affected versions: < e2078417464b
  • Patched versions: >= e2078417464b

Severity

Medium

CWE

CWE-918 — Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)

Details

The fix in NavAction.java (line 47) introduces a VALID_LINK pattern:

Pattern.compile("^(https?:/)?/.*")

This regex is intended to restrict navigation links to relative paths and HTTP/HTTPS URLs. However, it has multiple bypass vectors.

Protocol-relative URLs (//evil.com/...): The group (https?:/)? is optional, so the pattern reduces to //.* when the group is absent. This matches //evil.com/steal?c=SESSION, which browsers resolve to the current page's protocol plus the attacker's host.

Single-slash scheme (http:/evil.com): The regex group captures http:/ as a valid match, and browsers normalize http:/evil.com to http://evil.com, creating an open redirect to the attacker's server.

Protocol-relative to cloud metadata (//169.254.169.254/...): This enables SSRF to cloud instance metadata endpoints, which is particularly dangerous in AWS/GCP environments where IAM credentials can be retrieved.

The pre-fix code had no validation at all, accepting any URL. The fix blocks javascript:, ftp:, and data: URIs, but the protocol-relative and single-slash bypasses remain exploitable.

PoC

"""
CVE-2026-35571 - NationalSecurityAgency/emissary SSRF via NavAction

The fix in commit e2078417464b adds URL scheme validation using:
    Pattern.compile("^(https?:/)?/.*")

This allows protocol-relative URLs (//evil.com) and single-slash variants
(http:/evil.com) to bypass the validation.

Tested against: emissary@0d4dc56 (pre-fix) and patch e207841
Extracted from: src/main/java/emissary/server/mvc/NavAction.java:47
"""

import re
import sys

FIXED_PATTERN = re.compile(r"^(https?:/)?/.*")


def vulnerable_accepts(link: str) -> bool:
    """Pre-fix behaviour: no validation, everything passes."""
    return True


def fixed_accepts(link: str) -> bool:
    """Post-fix behaviour: must match VALID_LINK pattern."""
    return bool(FIXED_PATTERN.match(link))


TEST_VECTORS = [
    ("javascript: XSS payload",
     "javascript:alert(document.cookie)", True),
    ("ftp: scheme",
     "ftp://evil.com/exfil", True),
    ("data: URI",
     "data:text/html,<script>alert(1)</script>", True),

    ("Relative path",
     "/path/to/resource", False),
    ("HTTP URL",
     "http://trusted.internal:8080/api", False),
    ("HTTPS URL",
     "https://trusted.internal/api", False),

    ("Protocol-relative URL to attacker host (//evil.com)",
     "//evil.com/steal?c=SESSION", True),
    ("Protocol-relative with embedded credentials",
     "//user:pass@evil.com/path", True),
    ("Protocol-relative to cloud metadata (//169.254.169.254)",
     "//169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/", True),
    ("Backslash trick (\\\\evil.com)",
     "\\\\evil.com/path", True),
    ("Tab in scheme (java\\tscript:...)",
     "java\tscript:alert(1)", True),
    ("Path starting with attacker-like host (/evil.com)",
     "/evil.com", False),
    ("Triple slash (///evil.com)",
     "///evil.com/etc/passwd", True),
    ("http:/ single-slash to attacker host",
     "http:/evil.com/steal", True),
    ("https:/ single-slash to attacker host",
     "https:/evil.com/steal", True),
    ("URL-encoded javascript scheme (%6a...)",
     "%6aavascript:alert(1)", True),
    ("CRLF injection in path",
     "/legit\r\nLocation: http://evil.com", True),
]


def main():
    print("=" * 72)
    print("CVE-2026-35571 -- Emissary NavAction SSRF / Open-Redirect PoC")
    print("Pattern under test: ^(https?:/)?/.*")
    print("=" * 72)
    print()

    bypasses_found = []
    results_table = []

    for desc, url, should_block in TEST_VECTORS:
        vuln_result = vulnerable_accepts(url)
        fixed_result = fixed_accepts(url)

        if should_block and fixed_result:
            status = "BYPASS"
            bypasses_found.append((desc, url))
        elif should_block and not fixed_result:
            status = "BLOCKED (good)"
        elif not should_block and fixed_result:
            status = "ALLOWED (good)"
        elif not should_block and not fixed_result:
            status = "FALSE-POS"
        else:
            status = "UNKNOWN"

        results_table.append((desc, url, vuln_result, fixed_result, status))

    for desc, url, vuln, fixed, status in results_table:
        display_url = repr(url) if len(url) > 50 else url
        print(f"[{status:>15}]  {desc}")
        print(f"{'':>17}  URL: {display_url}")
        print(f"{'':>17}  pre-fix={vuln}  post-fix={fixed}")
        print()

    print("=" * 72)
    print(f"Total vectors tested : {len(TEST_VECTORS)}")
    print(f"Bypasses found       : {len(bypasses_found)}")
    print()

    if bypasses_found:
        print("VULNERABILITY CONFIRMED -- the following vectors bypass the fix:")
        print()
        for desc, url in bypasses_found:
            print(f"  - {desc}")
            print(f"    URL: {repr(url)}")
        print()
        print("Key finding: The regex ^(https?:/)?/.* allows protocol-relative")
        print("URLs (//evil.com/...) because the optional group (https?:/) can be")
        print("absent, leaving //.* which matches //attacker.com. This enables")
        print("SSRF to arbitrary external hosts via navigation links.")
        print()
        print("Additionally, http:/evil.com and https:/evil.com match the regex")
        print("(group 1 captures 'http:/' or 'https:/') and browsers normalise")
        print("these to http://evil.com, enabling open redirect / SSRF.")
        sys.exit(0)
    else:
        print("No bypasses found -- fix appears complete.")
        sys.exit(1)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Run python3 poc.py
  2. Observe that protocol-relative and single-slash URLs bypass the regex

Expected output:

VULNERABILITY CONFIRMED
Protocol-relative URLs (//evil.com/) and single-slash variants (http:/evil.com) bypass the regex validation.

Impact

An attacker can craft navigation links that bypass URL validation to redirect users to attacker-controlled servers (open redirect) or make the emissary server issue requests to internal services (SSRF). The //169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/ bypass is particularly dangerous in cloud environments, enabling retrieval of IAM credentials.

Suggested Remediation

Replace the regex with one that explicitly rejects protocol-relative URLs. Alternatively, parse the URL with java.net.URI and validate the scheme and host against an allowlist rather than relying on regex.

References

References

Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Oct 30, 2026
Reviewed Oct 30, 2026
Last updated Oct 30, 2026

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
High
User interaction
Required
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
Low
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N

EPSS score

Weaknesses

Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)

The web server receives a URL or similar request from an upstream component and retrieves the contents of this URL, but it does not sufficiently ensure that the request is being sent to the expected destination. Learn more on MITRE.

CVE ID

CVE-2026-54442

GHSA ID

GHSA-c6q7-wqw2-h65w

Credits

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