Vulnerability Database

383,304

Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2026-88879 — traefik / traefik

Authentication Bypass by Spoofing

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.

  • Published: Sep 10, 2026
  • Updated: Sep 13, 2026
  • CVE: CVE-2026-88879
  • Severity: Medium
  • Exploit:
  • CISA KEV:

No technical information available.

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.