Executive brief
Apache Polaris, a data management service, contains a flaw in how it handles special characters in table names. An attacker with basic permissions can create a table name containing a wildcard character to trick the system into granting access to other users' private data stored in Amazon S3. This could allow an unauthorized person to read, modify, or delete sensitive database files belonging to other teams or departments.
Technical details
Apache Polaris is vulnerable to improper input validation and improper escaping (CWE-20, CWE-116) when handling literal '*' characters in namespace and table names. When Polaris generates temporary S3 IAM policies for delegated access, these characters are reused unescaped in resource patterns and 's3:prefix' conditions. Because AWS IAM treats '*' as a wildcard, an attacker with 'TABLE_CREATE' permissions can craft a table name (e.g., '*.*') that generates credentials valid for the S3 storage paths of other tables. This allows an authenticated user to bypass Polaris permission checks to list, read, create, and delete objects in unauthorized S3 locations, including Iceberg metadata JSON files. The vulnerability is fixed in version 1.4.1.
Affected products
- Apache Polaris before 1.4.1
Timeline
- 2026-05-02: disclosed: Initial disclosure on oss-security mailing list
- 2026-05-04: advisory: CVE published and NVD entry created
- 2026-05-12: patched: NIST analysis confirms fix in version 1.4.1