CVE-2026-54763

Traefik: Incomplete fix for CVE-2026-33433 + CVE-2026-39858 cross-cohort: headerField underscore-variant identity spoofing in BasicAuth / DigestAuth / ForwardAuth

Published

2026-08-06

Modified

2026-08-06

EPSS percentile

11%

Aliases

GHSA-x677-9fxg-v5c5

Sources

github-advisory

Summary

## Summary There is a high severity vulnerability in Traefik's BasicAuth, DigestAuth, and ForwardAuth middlewares. The fix for CVE-2026-33433 stripped canonical-cased spoofed identity headers (e.g. `X-Auth-User`) before writing Traefik's own value, but did not account for underscore-variant header names (e.g. `X_Auth_User`), which many backends normalize identically to the dashed form. An attacker able to reach a protected route could inject an underscore-variant header that survives Traefik's stripping and reaches the backend alongside — or, on the unauthenticated ForwardAuth `authResponseHeaders` path, instead of — the value Traefik intended to set, spoofing identity or authorization context. This is fixed by setting the new `allowHeadersWithUnderscores: false` entry point option, which strips all headers with underscores in their names before routing. ## Patches - https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v2.11.51 - https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.6.22 - https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.7.6 ## For more information If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, please [open an issue](https://github.com/traefik/traefik/issues). Original Description # Incomplete fix for CVE-2026-33433 + CVE-2026-39858 cross-cohort: `headerField` underscore-variant identity spoofing in BasicAuth / DigestAuth / ForwardAuth ## Summary The fix for CVE-2026-33433 (GHSA-qr99-7898-vr7c, "BasicAuth/DigestAuth Identity Spoofing via Non-Canonical headerField", patched in v2.11.42 / v3.6.12 / v3.7.0-ea.3) added `req.Header.Del(headerField)` before the literal-key writeback in `pkg/middlewares/auth/basic_auth.go` and `pkg/middlewares/auth/digest_auth.go`. Go's `Header.Del` calls `textproto.CanonicalMIMEHeaderKey` which canonicalizes ASCII CASE and treats `-` as a word separator — so the fix correctly strips canonical-cased attacker headers (`X-Auth-User`, `x-auth-user`, `X-AUTH-USER`, etc.). However, `textproto.CanonicalMIMEHeaderKey` does **NOT** treat `_` as a separator. Attacker-supplied **underscore-variant** headers such as `X_Auth_User` survive `Header.Del("X-Auth-User")` intact and are forwarded to the backend alongside Traefik's own writeback. Many common backends (CGI/WSGI per RFC 3875, PHP `$_SERVER`, nginx with `underscores_in_headers on`, Tomcat / Java EE servlet containers, ASGI/WSGI frameworks) normalize `_` ↔ `-` equivalently or expose both forms to application code that may read the attacker's value. This is the **direct cross-cohort sibling** of the threat model the maintainer accepted in **CVE-2026-39858** (GHSA-5m6w-wvh7-57vm, "Forwarded alias spoofing pre-auth decision bypass"), which fixed the underscore-variant of the X-Forwarded-* family via `isManagedXHeader` in `pkg/middlewares/forwardedheaders/forwarded_header.go`. The CVE-2026-39858 advisory body states verbatim: > "When the backend normalizes underscore and dash header forms equivalently, an attacker can inject spoofed trust context — such as a trusted scheme or host — through the alias headers and bypass authentication on protected routes without valid credentials." The same threat model applies to the operator-configurable `headerField` (BasicAuth, DigestAuth) and `authResponseHeaders` (ForwardAuth, ingress-nginx snippet provider), but the underscore-handling primitive (`isManagedXHeader`) was not extended to those middlewares. I verified the bypass end-to-end on `traefik:v3.6.14` (the latest patched release containing both fixes) using a default-recommended canonical `headerField: "X-Auth-User"` config and reproduced the bypass with a single `curl -H "X_Auth_User: superadmin" ...` request alongside valid BasicAuth credentials. The defect is present in four code paths at HEAD `eec68dce064f843b4317c4393aaea81b6dea31d6`: 1. `pkg/middlewares/auth/basic_auth.go:101-105` — BasicAuth `headerField` 2. `pkg/middlewares/auth/digest_auth.go:99-103` — DigestAuth `headerField` 3. `pkg/middl

Affected packages

Remediation: Upgrade to 2.11.51 or later.

References

• https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-x677-9fxg-v5c5