Executive brief
Spring AMQP is a widely-used Java library for building applications that communicate via message queues. A maliciously crafted AMQP message can cause the entire Java process hosting the consumer to terminate abruptly, taking all co-located applications and workloads offline. This results in complete service unavailability for any system sharing the same process.
Technical details
Spring AMQP contains a flaw in message handling that allows a hostile AMQP message to trigger an uncaught exception leading to JVM termination (System.exit(99)). The vulnerability affects the message listener and consumer logic, which processes untrusted network messages without proper exception handling. An attacker with the ability to send messages to the AMQP broker can craft a specific message payload that exploits this condition. No authentication or special preconditions are required beyond network access to the AMQP broker. The result is a denial-of-service condition affecting all workloads running in the targeted process. Patches are available in Spring AMQP 2.4.19+, 3.2.13+, and 4.0.5+.
Affected products
- VMware Spring AMQP 2.4.18 and earlier; 3.2.0 through 3.2.12; 4.0.0 through 4.0.4; 4.1.0
Timeline
- 2026-08-27: disclosed