Executive Summary

CVE-2026-41856 is a high-severity vulnerability in Spring for GraphQL that affects applications using Spring Security's @EnableMethodSecurity feature.

The issue occurs because Spring GraphQL's annotation detection mechanism fails to correctly resolve security annotations on methods within type hierarchies, specifically for @Controller data fetchers.

As a result, authorization checks that rely on these annotations can be bypassed at runtime, potentially allowing unauthorized access.

This vulnerability only impacts applications that have Spring Security on the classpath, use @EnableMethodSecurity for security checks, and implement @Controller classes within type hierarchies.

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Impact Analysis

This vulnerability can allow attackers to bypass authorization checks in affected Spring for GraphQL applications.

If your application meets the conditions (using Spring Security, @EnableMethodSecurity, and @Controller classes in type hierarchies), unauthorized users might gain access to protected resources or perform actions without proper permissions.

This can lead to exposure of sensitive data or unauthorized operations, impacting the confidentiality of your system.

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Detection Guidance

This vulnerability affects applications using Spring Security's @EnableMethodSecurity feature with Spring for GraphQL in certain versions. Detection involves identifying if your application uses affected versions of Spring for GraphQL and relies on @EnableMethodSecurity with @Controller classes in type hierarchies.

There are no specific network or system commands provided to detect this vulnerability directly.

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Mitigation Strategies

The primary and immediate mitigation step is to upgrade Spring for GraphQL to the fixed versions: 2.0.4, 1.4.6, 1.3.9, or 1.0.7, depending on your release track.

No additional mitigation steps are required beyond upgrading.

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Compliance Impact

This vulnerability can impact compliance with common standards and regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA because it allows security annotations used for authorization decisions to be ignored at runtime. This means unauthorized access to sensitive data or functions could occur if the application relies on Spring Security's @EnableMethodSecurity feature and is affected by this issue. Such unauthorized access could lead to violations of data protection and privacy requirements mandated by these regulations.

To maintain compliance, affected applications should upgrade to the fixed versions of Spring for GraphQL (2.0.4, 1.4.6, 1.3.9, or 1.0.7) to ensure that authorization checks are properly enforced and security annotations are correctly resolved.

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