GHSA-x677-9fxg-v5c5: Go/github.com/traefik/traefik/v3 vulnerability

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. XAuthUser), 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.

<details> <summary>Original Description</summary>

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/basicauth.go and pkg/middlewares/auth/digestauth.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 XAuthUser 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 underscoresinheaders 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/forwardedheader.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 "XAuthUser: superadmin" ... request alongside valid BasicAuth credentials.

The defect is present in four code paths at HEAD eec68dce064f843b4317c4393aaea81b6dea31d6:

1. pkg/middlewares/auth/basicauth.go:101-105 — BasicAuth headerField 2. pkg/middlewares/auth/digestauth.go:99-103 — DigestAuth headerField 3. pkg/middlewares/auth/forward.go:304-310 — ForwardAuth authResponseHeaders per-name writeback 4. pkg/middlewares/ingressnginx/snippet/snippet.go:480-486 — Ingress-NGINX snippet authResponseHeaders per-name writeback

The ForwardAuth instance (#3) is particularly notable: the attacker does NOT need credentials. The authResponseHeaders mechanism is intended to copy identity headers from the trusted auth server only; the underscore-variant bypass lets an unauthenticated attacker pre-inject the same identity header before any auth happens.

The fast proxy at pkg/proxy/fast/proxy.go:139 explicitly calls DisableNormalizing() on the outgoing fasthttp request, guaranteeing that the underscore-variant header reaches the backend wire verbatim. The standard httputil.ReverseProxy path at pkg/proxy/httputil/proxy.go:55 likewise copies req.Header keys as-is during the wire write.

Affected versions

- traefik v3.6.x ≤ 3.6.14, v3.7.x ≤ 3.7.0-rc.2, v2.11.x ≤ 2.11.43, and all earlier versions sharing the same auth middleware architecture.

The defect is present at HEAD post-CVE-2026-33433 fix (the fix added the Del line but the literal-key write defect-class survives for underscore variants).

Root cause

In pkg/middlewares/auth/basicauth.go at HEAD eec68dc:

go if b.headerField != "" { // TODO Deprecated we should add the header with canonical key. req.Header.Del(b.headerField) req.Header[b.headerField] = []string{user} }

The TODO comment shows the maintainer is aware of the literal-key write problem in general (canonical-key write would solve the case-canonicalization issue more cleanly than the current Del + literal-write pair). The comment does not acknowledge the underscore-variant survival corollary.

pkg/middlewares/auth/digestauth.go:99-103 and the two ForwardAuth paths follow the same Del + literal-write pattern. Each is independently exploitable; the underlying primitive defect is shared.

The maintainer's gold-standard primitive for handling this exact threat class is pkg/middlewares/forwardedheaders/forwardedheader.go:53-66:

go func isManagedXHeader(key string) bool { if len(key) == 0 || key[0] != 'X' { return false } if , ok := XHeadersSet[key]; ok { return true } if strings.IndexByte(key, '') < 0 { return false } canonical := http.CanonicalHeaderKey(strings.ReplaceAll(key, "", "-")) , ok := XHeadersSet[canonical] return ok }

This treats ↔ - equivalence as a security requirement. It is reachable only via the static XHeadersSet membership check, which contains exclusively the X-Forwarded- family + X-Real-Ip. Operator-configurable identity headers are out of scope of this primitive.

Proof of concept

Verified on traefik:v3.6.14 (the patched version, post-CVE-2026-33433 and post-CVE-2026-39858) using Docker compose. Full reproducer at https://github.com/<attacker-repo>/traefik-ht1a-poc; commands below are verbatim.

Setup

yaml docker-compose.yml services: traefik: image: traefik:v3.6.14 command: - --providers.file.filename=/etc/traefik/dynamic.yml - --entrypoints.web.address=:80 ports: - "8080:80" volumes: - ./traefik/dynamic.yml:/etc/traefik/dynamic.yml:ro echo: image: mendhak/http-https-echo:36 environment: - HTTPPORT=8888

yaml traefik/dynamic.yml — canonical headerField, recommended operator config http: routers: protected: rule: "PathPrefix(/)" service: echo middlewares: [basic-auth] services: echo: loadBalancer: servers: [{url: "http://echo:8888"}] middlewares: basic-auth: basicAuth: users: - 'alice:$2b$05$FhDfYidZdDPuQjovYqcTAe22wHpQ/cILC7Tr2yAD6vLlvZh/Q45PC' # alice:secret123 headerField: "X-Auth-User"

docker compose up -d.

Test 1 (control — CVE-2026-33433 fix works for canonical case)

bash $ curl -s -u alice:secret123 -H "X-Auth-User: superadmin" http://localhost:8080/ { ... "x-auth-user": "alice", ... }

The attacker's canonical X-Auth-User: superadmin was correctly stripped by Traefik's Del; the backend receives only Traefik's authenticated-user writeback alice.

Test 2 (HT-1A bypass — underscore variant survives)

bash $ curl -s -u alice:secret123 -H "XAuthUser: superadmin" http://localhost:8080/ { ... "x-auth-user": "alice", "xauthuser": "superadmin", ... }

The underscore-variant xauthuser: superadmin reached the backend intact, despite the Del("X-Auth-User") having executed. The backend sees both forms.

Test 3 (double-send — same result)

bash $ curl -s -u alice:secret123 \ -H "X-Auth-User: superadmin" \ -H "XAuthUser: superadmin" \ http://localhost:8080/ { ... "x-auth-user": "alice", # Traefik's writeback "xauthuser": "superadmin", # attacker's underscore — survived Del ... }

The canonical attacker header is stripped (Test 1 behavior). The underscore variant is forwarded.

Backend impact

The PoC's echo backend (mendhak/http-https-echo, Node.js) preserves both forms with the lowercase normalization Node.js applies. Application code reading req.headers["x-auth-user"] sees alice. Application code reading req.headers["xauthuser"] sees superadmin.

For backends that normalize ↔ - equivalently — meaning the attacker's value wins:

- CGI / WSGI / PHP $SERVER (RFC 3875 §4.1.18 — header name uppercased with - replaced by ): both X-Auth-User and XAuthUser map to HTTPXAUTHUSER. The last-set wins per the WSGI server's iteration order; many servers (gunicorn, uwsgi without --disable-logging, waitress) preserve both. Note: Apache + modphp with default HttpProtocolOptions Strict filters underscore-headers from $SERVER (this PoC's PHP backend test demonstrated the filter); Apache + modpython, Apache + modwsgi without the strict mode, nginx + uwsgi, nginx + gunicorn, nginx + FastCGI, and standalone WSGI servers do NOT filter. - nginx with underscoresinheaders on (https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngxhttpcoremodule.html#underscoresinheaders): preserves underscore-variant headers and forwards them to upstream as separate values. Upstream application logic that does case-insensitive + underscore-insensitive matching (common pattern in security-sensitive code) merges them. - Tomcat / Java EE servlet containers: HttpServletRequest.getHeader(name) is case-insensitive; underscore handling is container-specific. Many normalize. - Application middleware (WAFs, log aggregators, security gateways, identity-aware proxies) that normalize header names before applying security policy: both forms collapse to the same authorization decision input.

Severity

I propose HIGH CVSS 7.5 for the BasicAuth / DigestAuth case and CRITICAL CVSS 9.1 for the ForwardAuth authResponseHeaders case (the latter requires no credentials).

CVSS 3.1 vector (BasicAuth / DigestAuth): AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N=7.5 — one step above CVE-2026-33433 (which the maintainer scored MEDIUM 5.1 because it required misconfigured non-canonical headerField). HT-1A works against the canonical / recommended headerField configuration, broader operational scope.

CVSS 3.1 vector (ForwardAuth authResponseHeaders): AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N=9.1 — parallel to CVE-2026-39858 (HIGH 7.5) but achieves spoofing without credentials because the authResponseHeaders mechanism trusts headers exclusively from the auth server and the underscore variant defeats that trust boundary.

CWEs: - CWE-290 (Authentication Bypass by Spoofing) - CWE-178 (Improper Handling of Case Sensitivity) — analogous to CVE-2026-29054 - CWE-345 (Insufficient Verification of Data Authenticity) — same as CVE-2026-35051

Suggested fix

Two equivalent approaches:

1. Extend Header.Del to handle underscore variants at the four call sites. Replace:

go req.Header.Del(b.headerField) req.Header[b.headerField] = []string{user}

with:

go canonical := http.CanonicalHeaderKey(b.headerField) // Strip canonical AND underscore-variant of the canonical key. for key := range req.Header { if key == canonical || strings.EqualFold(strings.ReplaceAll(key, "", "-"), canonical) { delete(req.Header, key) } } req.Header.Set(canonical, user) // canonical-key write

This pairs the headerField primitive with the same ↔ - equivalence that isManagedXHeader enforces for X-Forwarded-.

2. Generalize the existing isManagedXHeader primitive into a stripHeaderAndVariants(headers http.Header, name string) helper in the forwardedheaders package and call it from basicauth.go, digestauth.go, forward.go, and snippet.go. Reusing the existing gold-standard primitive is the cleanest fix and minimizes future drift.

Either approach should also resolve the // TODO Deprecated we should add the header with canonical key. debt at basicauth.go:102 and digestauth.go:100 by writing to the canonical key (Header.Set(canonical, user)) instead of the literal b.headerField.

Why this is a Pattern-8 sibling, not a new CVE class

The combination of:

1. CVE-2026-33433's fix scope (case-canonicalization for headerField) 2. CVE-2026-39858's fix scope (underscore-variant for XHeadersSet) 3. The defective primitive remaining at HEAD (the Del + literal-write pair at four call sites)

establishes that the maintainer accepts the threat model and has architectural primitives to fix it — but did not cross the two cohorts. The "primitive depth-audit" of the CVE-2026-33433 fix (reading the actual Header.Del implementation against the documented threat model and Go's canonicalization semantics) reveals the gap.

I confirmed there is no public PoC mentioning underscore-variant siblings of CVE-2026-33433 (WebSearched 2026-05-23). The fix-flurry from the April 2026 security release batch addressed the X-Forwarded family but not the headerField family.

Credit

Matteo Panzeri (GitHub matte1782). CVE credit requested.

AI-assistance disclosure

Static analysis, hypothesis writing, and hostile-review confirmation were assisted by Anthropic Claude (Opus 4.7). Live PoC reproduction, code-citation verification, and submission decision were made by the human author.

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