Live Exposure Defense: From CVE to Confirmed Exposure in 12 Hours – See more

Back
New CVE Detected

CVE-2026-42018 – Unauthenticated Anonymous Token Issuance – JFrog Artifactory

Be the first to know when new zero-days emerge:

Subscribe to Email Alerts
Subscribe to RSS Feed

Summary

CVE-2026-42018 is an improper-authentication vulnerability (CWE-287) in the JFrog Access service bundled with JFrog Artifactory. The AWS token-exchange endpoint is authentication-gated and returns HTTP 401 to unauthenticated callers, but a trailing-slash variant of the same path is not matched by the request-authorization filter. The request instead falls back to the internal anonymous security context, and the server issues a valid, signed JWT for the internal anonymous user — even when anonymous access has been administratively disabled.

The issue is rated High severity (CVSS 7.5), requires no authentication and no user interaction, and is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog as actively exploited.

Technical details

  • Root cause: a trailing-slash path mismatch in the JFrog Access request-authorization filter. The bare path is gated; the trailing-slash variant is not matched by the filter rule.
  • Trigger condition: a single unauthenticated POST to the trailing-slash variant of the AWS token-exchange path, with an empty JSON body.
  • Attack vector: network — remotely exploitable, low complexity, no privileges, no user interaction.
  • Impact: the response contains a signed JWT minted for the internal anonymous principal, scoped applied-permissions/user. Disabling anonymous access does not mitigate it.
  • Observed in the wild: attackers chain the leaked anonymous token with CVE-2026-42016 to obtain an administrator-scoped token, and have used that access to deploy backdoors into hosted repositories.

Affected software

JFrog Artifactory (self-hosted), all editions, on releases prior to the fixed versions below.

Fixed versions

Upgrade to 7.111.20, 7.117.27, 7.125.19, 7.133.28, 7.146.8 or later, on whichever release branch you run.

Recommended action

  1. Upgrade Artifactory to a fixed release for your branch. Note that instances several minor versions behind the fix line require a larger upgrade than a patch bump.
  2. If an immediate upgrade is not possible, restrict network access to the /access/api/v1/aws endpoints at the reverse proxy or load balancer.
  3. Audit access tokens issued to the anonymous user, and review repository and permission changes made since the exposure window began.
  4. Because the flaw is independent of the anonymous-access setting, do not treat "anonymous access is disabled" as evidence that an instance is unaffected.

References

Are you exposed?

Get a free report of your organization’s exposure to this CVE and threat

  • Mapping of all Assets with this Technology
  • Identification of potentially exposed assets to this CVE
  • Confirmation of verified exploitable assets
Get Exposure Report

How IONIX’s External Exposure Management Platform Detects and Validates
Zero-Days to Shrink MTTR

1

Map your entire attack surface (continously)

IONIX uses multi-factor discovery methods, including DNS analysis, certificate mapping, metadata inspection, and more, to automatically map every internet-facing asset across your environment. This includes cloud instances, third-party platforms, shadow IT, and even forgotten infrastructure that traditional tools miss.

2

Monitor for new CVEs

Dozens of threat intel feeds using agentic technology are continuously analyzed to detect the appearance of proof-of-concept code, exploit kits, and indicators of active targeting. IONIX goes further by applying AI to proactively evaluate whether emerging vulnerabilities are likely to be exploited, even before PoCs go public.

3

Identify Potential External Exposures

Not all CVEs matter. IONIX filters vulnerabilities by asking attacker-centric questions: Can it be reached from the internet? Does it require authentication? Is it being exploited in the wild? This dramatically reduces noise and focuses teams on threats that can actually be weaponized.

4

Create Safe, Scalable Exploit Validations

IONIX transforms real-world PoCs into safe, non-intrusive test payloads that can be run in production environments without disruption. These simulations are precisely targeted to the systems that are vulnerable, ensuring rapid validation without unnecessary load.

5

Execute Exploit Validations

By combining context about software stack, versioning, exposure status, and reachability, IONIX ensures that only the right payloads are executed against the right assets, maximizing efficiency and minimizing risk.

6

Drive Fast and Actionable Remediation

Results are routed through integrations with ticketing, SOAR, and SIEM tools. Issues are written in plain language, bundled into remediation clusters, and prioritized based on asset criticality, exploitability, and blast radius. This shortens mean time to remediation (MTTR) and empowers teams to act with confidence.

Are you exposed?

Get a free report of your organization’s exposure to this CVE and threat

  • Mapping of all Assets with this Technology
  • Identification of potentially exposed assets to this CVE
  • Confirmation of verified exploitable assets
Get Exposure Report
Close

Subscribe to Threat Center RSS

Copy/paste the link below into your preferred RSS reader or follow these instructions to subscribe to Slack alerts.

Open RSS feedSlack setup instructions

Close

Get Real-Time CVE Alerts to Your Email

Be the first to know when new zero-days emerge