Vulnerability Database

352,928

Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2026-46356 — fleetdm / fleet

Authentication Bypass by Spoofing

Fleet is open source device management software. Prior to version 4.80.1, a vulnerability in Fleet's IP extraction logic allows unauthenticated attackers to bypass API rate limiting by spoofing client IP headers. This may allow brute-force login attempts or other abuse against Fleet instances exposed to the public internet. Fleet extracted client IP addresses from request headers (True-Client-IP, X-Real-IP, X-Forwarded-For) without validating that those headers originate from a trusted proxy. The extracted IP is used as the key for rate limiting and IP ban decisions. As a result, an attacker could rotate the value of these headers on each request, causing Fleet to treat each attempt as coming from a different client. This effectively bypasses per-IP rate limits on sensitive endpoints such as the login API, enabling unrestricted brute-force or credential stuffing attacks. This issue primarily affects Fleet instances that are directly exposed to the internet without a reverse proxy that overwrites forwarded-IP headers. Instances behind a properly configured proxy or WAF are less affected. Version 4.80.1 contains a patch. If an immediate upgrade is not possible, administrators should ensure Fleet is deployed behind a reverse proxy (e.g., nginx, Cloudflare, AWS ALB) that overwrites X-Forwarded-For with the true client IP, and apply rate limiting at the proxy or WAF layer.

CVSS v3:

  • Severity: High
  • Score: 7.5
  • AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

CWEs:

Frequently Asked Questions

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.