GHSA-c6q7-wqw2-h65w - NationalSecurityAgency/emissary has an incomplete fix for CVE-2026-35571
### 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 โ Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF)
### Details
The fix in `NavAction.java` (line 47) introduces a `VALID_LINK` pattern:
```java
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
```python
"""
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
MEDIUM
Severity & confidence
Source severitymedium
Platform severitymedium
Confidenceconfirmed
Exploitationunknown
CVSS4.8
Affected
Vendorsgov.nsa.emissary:emissaryRed Hat
Productsgov.nsa.emissary:emissary
Sectorsgovernment
Reporting sources (3)
GitHub Security Advisories
Red Hat - CVE Feed
NIST NVD - National Vulnerability Database
Timeline & provenance
Published2026-10-30T22:51:19
Last updated2026-11-09T09:51:15
Ingested2026-10-30T22:59:15
FreshnessNEAR-REAL-TIME
Threat typeadvisory
Recommended action
Review the advisory and upgrade affected packages to the first patched version.
Next steps
- Identify affected systems in your environment.
- Apply the vendor patch or mitigation guidance.
- Review logs for indicators described in the advisory.
- Follow the affected vendor/product to track updates.
Confidence explanation
This object is reported by 3 independent sources.
Source type: vendor ยท Original: GitHub Security Advisories