High · published July 14, 2026
In Eclipse Vert.x versions up to and including 4.5.29 (4.x branch) and 5.1.4 (5.x branch), DefaultRedirectHandler (vertx-core) propagates all request headers as-is across cross-origin HTTP 30x redirects. Only Content-Length is stripped; no origin comparison (scheme, host, port) is performed before copying headers to the redirect target.
As a result, credential headers, including Authorization, Cookie, Proxy-Authorization, and arbitrary custom headers such as X-API-Token, are forwarded to the redirect destination without the caller's knowledge.
An attacker who can cause a Vert.x HttpClient to issue a request that is redirected to an attacker-controlled host (for example, by supplying a URL to a webhook dispatcher, image proxy, or microservice URL fetcher) can capture bearer tokens, basic-auth credentials, session cookies, and API keys attached to the original request.