Looking at PR https://github.com/jbossws/jbossws-cxf/commit/149c0fc8d19e566541d919e73b608ae53ca3fefb I can see that method is removed https://github.com/jbossws/jbossws-cxf/commit/149c0fc8d19e566541d919e73b608ae53ca3fefb#diff-a1217ed7fad4ab31725d3c30897edfaeL180-L189 but this makes the CustomValidator class unused, this might not be the cause of the issue reported here but if it is a dead code, it should be removed too.