CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-88879

MediumCVSS 5.3
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Summary

Traefik v1.x, v2.x through v2.11.55, and v3.0.0 through v3.7.11 canonicalize header names only on dashes, so X-Auth-User, X_Auth_User, and X.Auth.User are treated as three distinct headers by Traefik, while backends that derive variable names from header names (CGI, WSGI, PHP, NGINX, and others) collapse them into a single variable. A client can smuggle a dot-form alias of a header managed by Traefik alongside the canonical version, e.g., X.Authenticated.User alongside X-Authenticated-User, causing the backend to read the client-supplied value instead of the identity Traefik asserted.

Risk Assessment

A client admitted by ForwardAuth as a low-privilege identity can be treated by the backend as a different user or role, leading to privilege escalation and access control bypass. Any header Traefik sets is affected, not only ForwardAuth's.

Recommendation

Upgrade Traefik to v2.11.56 or v3.7.12 and explicitly set the aliasHeadersStrategy option to 'delete' or 'reject' (the default 'keep' does not provide protection). Note that unmaintained release lines will not receive a patch.

Other vulnerabilities in Traefik

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Original NVD description (English source)

Traefik is an HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer. In Traefik v1.x, v2.x through v2.11.55, and v3.0.0 through v3.7.11, header names are canonicalized only on dashes, so X-Auth-User, X_Auth_User and X.Auth.User are treated as three distinct headers by Traefik, while backends that derive variable names from header names (CGI, WSGI, PHP, NGINX and others) collapse them into a single variable. A client can therefore smuggle a dot-form alias of a header that Traefik manages past the middleware managing it — for example supplying X.Authenticated.User alongside the canonical X-Authenticated-User written by the ForwardAuth middleware — causing such a backend to read the client-supplied value instead of the identity Traefik asserted. In the tested configuration (PHP 8.2 built-in SAPI over an HTTP/1 backend path), Go's lexical header ordering makes the attacker-supplied value win deterministically, so a client that ForwardAuth admits as a low-privilege identity can be treated by the backend as a different user or role. Any header Traefik sets is affected, not only ForwardAuth's. This is an incomplete fix for GHSA-x677-9fxg-v5c5, which blocked only the underscore form. Fixed in v2.11.56 and v3.7.12, which add the aliasHeadersStrategy entry-point option; because it defaults to 'keep' for backwards compatibility, it must be explicitly set to 'delete' or 'reject' for the fix to take effect. Unmaintained release lines will not receive a patch.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS