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Traefik before v2.11.56 Identity Spoofing via Header Alias

Type: advisorySource: Official CVE List1 source record

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.

Announced Source revision 1
Original source ↗

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
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Prerequisites
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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
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Publisher date
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