What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-57485: Stirling-PDF: Internal Service Account API Key Disclosure via Pipeline Endpoint

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-08-17 · updated 2026-10-23
• Weakness: CWE-200

Description

Stirling-PDF is a locally hosted web application that facilitates various operations on PDF files. Prior to 2.9.0, the /api/v1/pipeline/handleData endpoint in app/core/src/main/java/stirling/software/SPDF/controller/api/pipeline/PipelineProcessor.java injects the STIRLING-PDF-BACKEND-API-USER API key into pipeline subrequests, allowing an authenticated ROLE_USER to retrieve the key through /api/v1/user/get-api-key, impersonate the internal service account, bypass normal rate limits, and access internal endpoints including /api/v1/info/requests/all and /api/v1/info/load/all. This issue is fixed in version 2.9.0.

Affected products

• Stirling-Tools Stirling-PDF: before 2.9.0

References

• https://github.com/Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF/commit/de9625942bbc329fdefcfde161476a633a3b3213
• https://github.com/Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF/pull/6047
• https://github.com/Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF/releases/tag/v2.9.0
• https://github.com/Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF/security/advisories/GHSA-3xxh-mm3g-c9w5
• https://github.com/Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF/security/advisories/GHSA-3xxh-mm3g-c9w5

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