Summary
OpenAM Pre-auth User Profile Tampering via Anonymous SOAP Authn in Liberty IDPP/Discovery Endpoints
Description
An Improper Authorization (CWE-285) issue in OpenAM's Liberty Web Services SOAP receiver allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to write persistent entries into the Liberty Discovery store on any user's LDAP entry, and into a shared root-realm Discovery branch. This impacts OpenAM Community Edition through version 16.0.6. This issue was patched in version 16.1.1.
Liberty ID-WSF is a legacy protocol superseded by SAML 2.0, OAuth, and OIDC, and deployments that intentionally leverage it assume the risks of an unmaintained federation stack. While Liberty is exposed in the shipped defaults, this bug does not require active Liberty consumers for the write itself. Downstream impact depends on whether anything consumes Discovery data. The endpoint accepts anonymous writes that are performed server-side by the Discovery handlers, bypassing the requester's LDAP and identity ACLs. The global Discovery path explicitly uses the internal admin token.
Impact
OpenAM Community Edition deployments through version 16.0.6 that expose the Liberty Web Services component are potentially affected. An unauthenticated attacker who can reach the relevant endpoint may write persistent records to the discovery store, bypassing normal identity-layer access controls.
These writes are performed with elevated internal privileges server-side.
In deployments that actively consume Liberty discovery data, manipulated records could influence service routing or security mechanism selection in subsequent requests. The severity of downstream impact varies by deployment..
Affected versions
Security releases
Kodem intelligence
Severity tells you how bad this could be in the worst case. It does not tell you whether you are exposed. Exploitability and impact are functions of runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A vulnerable package can sit in your dependency tree and never run.
Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter. Kodem's runtime-powered SCA identifies whether this CVE is reachable in your applications.
Already deployed Kodem?
See it in your environmentNew to Kodem? Get a demo →Remediation advice
This has been patched in OpenAM Community Edition version 16.1.1. Users are encouraged to update to the latest release.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is CVE-2026-45052? CVE-2026-45052 is a critical-severity security vulnerability in org.openidentityplatform.openam:openam-federation-library (maven), affecting versions <= 16.0.6. It is fixed in 16.1.1.
- Which versions of org.openidentityplatform.openam:openam-federation-library are affected by CVE-2026-45052? org.openidentityplatform.openam:openam-federation-library (maven) versions <= 16.0.6 is affected.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-45052? Yes. CVE-2026-45052 is fixed in 16.1.1. Upgrade to this version or later.
- Is CVE-2026-45052 exploitable, and should I be worried? Whether CVE-2026-45052 is exploitable in your environment depends on whether the vulnerable code is present and reachable. A CVSS score is a worst-case rating; it does not account for your specific deployment, configuration, or usage patterns. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to show which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so you can focus on the ones that represent real risk. Get a demo
- What actually determines whether CVE-2026-45052 is exploitable, and how bad it is? Exploitability and impact are not fixed properties of a CVE. They depend on runtime truth: whether the vulnerable code is present, reachable, and actually executes in your application. A high CVSS score on a dependency that never runs is not the same as real risk. Kodem, an Intelligent Application Security platform, uses runtime intelligence to reveal which vulnerabilities actually execute in production, so teams prioritize the ones that genuinely matter.
- How do I fix CVE-2026-45052? Upgrade
org.openidentityplatform.openam:openam-federation-libraryto 16.1.1 or later.