CVE-2026-88879 json
Traefik before v2.11.56 Identity Spoofing via Header Alias
published 2026-09-10 1 mo ago modified 2026-10-08 31 d ago also EUVD-2026-75429
- cvss
- 8.2
- version 3.1, NVD
- cisa kev
- Not listed
- not in CISA's catalog
- epss
- 0.3%
- EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 22%
- public exploits
- 0
- none known
Summary
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.
Patch / fix
Vendor advisories
What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.
red hat product security vex CVE-2026-88879 updated cvss 9.6
github.com/traefik/traefik: Traefik: Identity spoofing via HTTP header alias
-
Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces 3.31 devspaces/traefik-rhel9 1792464177fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:90321
-
Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces 3.31 devspaces/udi-rhel9 1792708612, devspaces/code-rhel9 1792599388, devspaces/server-rhel9 1792775639, devspaces/openvsx-rhel9 1792494821, devspaces/udi-base-rhel9 1792686842, devspaces/code-sshd-rhel9 1792598059, +9 more Red Hat OpenShift GitOps openshift-gitops-1/argo-rollouts-rhel8, openshift-gitops-1/argo-rollouts-rhel9not affected: vulnerable code not present
Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf
CISA SSVC
- Exploitation
- none
- Automatable
- no
- Technical impact
- partial
- Assessed
- 1 mo ago
Exploit prediction
0.29% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 22% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).
CVSS scores
| assigned by | version | score | vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| CNA | 4.0 | 5.3 | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:N/SC:H/SI:H/SA:N |
| CNA | 4.0 | 5.3 | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:N/SC:H/SI:H/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X |
| NVD | 3.1 | 8.2 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:N |
Affected products
- traefik traefik
Classification
- Weakness
-
- CWE-290 Authentication Bypass by Spoofing
References
-
github.com
/traefik/traefik/security/advisories/GHSA-rf44-j88r-hh8c
vendor-advisory, patch
-
vulncheck.com
/advisories/traefik-before-2.11.56-identity-spoofing-via-header-alias
third-party-advisory
Sources
- CVE List CVE-2026-88879
- NVD CVE-2026-88879
Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.