Description

In the Neptune connector, a user with access to Neptune through Athena Federated Query could gain access to properties in the Lambda supplying the compute for the connector. To remediate this issue, users should upgrade to aws-athena-query-federation v2026.30.1 or later.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "9.9",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-21T20:16:45.530Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-21T20:16:45.530Z",
  "executiveSummary": "An information disclosure vulnerability has been identified within the Neptune connector utilized in AWS Athena Federated Query. This security flaw allows an authenticated user with existing access to Amazon Neptune via the federation mechanism to improperly access and extract sensitive properties residing within the underlying AWS Lambda function that supplies compute resources for the connector.\nThe primary impact of this vulnerability is the unauthorized exposure of internal configuration data, credentials, or operational parameters managed by the compute provider. The affected system is the aws-athena-query-federation framework, specifically within the Neptune connector implementation.\nThe risk implications include potential privilege escalation, unauthorized access to secondary internal resources, and the compromise of sensitive environment variables or execution secrets stored within the AWS Lambda function context. An attacker requires prior authorized access to Neptune through Athena Federated Query to leverage this flaw, exploiting the trust boundary between the federated query execution environment and the underlying compute provider.\nTo achieve exploitation, the malicious actor interacts with the federated query interface to query or inspect underlying properties exposed by the Lambda compute resource, bypassing intended isolation boundaries.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability stems from insufficient boundary enforcement and improper information handling within the Neptune connector used by AWS Athena Federated Query. Specifically, the trust relationship and data isolation between the query execution context and the AWS Lambda function supplying the compute capabilities fail to adequately restrict property access.\nThe vulnerable component is the Neptune connector within the aws-athena-query-federation package, specifically affecting versions prior to v2026.30.1. The root cause involves the leakage of Lambda function-level properties, environment variables, or internal operational configurations to users querying the Neptune database through the Athena federation layer.\nRegarding authentication and privileges, an attacker must possess valid access permissions to the Neptune database via Athena Federated Query. Network exposure is constrained by the architecture of AWS Athena and AWS Lambda, but within that boundary, the flaw permits unauthorized data retrieval across logical security tiers.\nThe step-by-step attack flow proceeds as follows: First, the adversary establishes or utilizes an existing authorized session to query the Amazon Neptune data source through Athena Federated Query. Second, instead of strictly querying graph database records, the user crafts specialized queries or leverages exposed connector behaviors that interact with the underlying AWS Lambda execution environment. Third, due to the lack of proper property filtering and isolation, the Neptune connector inadvertently returns internal properties, configuration parameters, or execution context data originating from the Lambda function back to the querying user.\nThe post-exploitation impact includes the potential harvesting of sensitive operational data, API keys, database connection strings, or internal secrets stored within the Lambda function configuration. This harvested intelligence can subsequently be leveraged to mount secondary attacks against related AWS infrastructure or compromise additional data stores."
}