Traefik before v2.11.56 Identity Spoofing via Header Alias
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.
CVE-2026-88879
Primary source · Revision 1
Imported from structured advisory data. Source references identify upstream records or fields; verify affected versions and your deployed configuration.
Security context
Source reference: cve:CVE-2026-88879
traefik
Source reference: /containers/cna/affected/0/product
- Affected versions
- Not stated in this record
- Fixed versions
- Not stated in this record
- Prerequisites
- Not stated in this record
traefik
Source reference: /containers/cna/affected/1/product
- Affected versions
- Not stated in this record
- Fixed versions
- Not stated in this record
- Prerequisites
- Not stated in this record
Structured affected-version data
Original package identities and version rules from this source.
[
{
"vendor": "traefik",
"product": "traefik",
"versions": [
{
"status": "affected",
"version": "0",
"lessThan": "2.11.56",
"versionType": "semver"
},
{
"status": "unaffected",
"version": "2.11.56",
"versionType": "semver"
}
],
"packageURL": "pkg:golang/github.com/traefik/traefik/v2",
"defaultStatus": "unaffected"
},
{
"vendor": "traefik",
"product": "traefik",
"versions": [
{
"status": "affected",
"version": "3.0.0",
"versionType": "semver",
"lessThanOrEqual": "3.7.13"
}
],
"packageURL": "pkg:golang/github.com/traefik/traefik/v3",
"defaultStatus": "unaffected"
}
]- Related CVEs
- CVE-2026-88879
Source reference:
/cveMetadata/cveId
Publisher severity
medium
Source reference: /containers/cna/metrics
- Event
- #12957 · Revision 1
- Added to Heist Feed
- Publisher date