CVE-2026-40575

OAuth2 Proxy is a reverse proxy that provides authentication using OAuth2 providers. Versions 7.5.0 through 7.15.1 may trust a client-supplied X-Forwarded-Uri header when --reverse-proxy is enabled and --skip-auth-regex or --skip-auth-route is configured. An attacker can spoof this header so OAuth2 Proxy evaluates authentication and skip-auth rules against a different path than the one actually sent to the upstream application. This can result in an unauthenticated remote attacker bypassing authentication and accessing protected routes without a valid session. Impacted users are deployments that run oauth2-proxy with --reverse-proxy enabled and configure at least one --skip-auth-regex or --skip-auth-route rule. This issue is patched in v7.15.2. Some workarounds are available for those who cannot upgrade immediately. Strip any client-provided X-Forwarded-Uri header at the reverse proxy or load balancer level; explicitly overwrite X-Forwarded-Uri with the actual request URI before forwarding requests to OAuth2 Proxy; restrict direct client access to OAuth2 Proxy so it can only be reached through a trusted reverse proxy; and/or remove or narrow --skip-auth-regex / --skip-auth-route rules where possible. For nginx-based deployments, ensure X-Forwarded-Uri is set by nginx and not passed through from the client.

OAuth2 Proxy is a reverse proxy that provides authentication using OAuth2 providers. Versions 7.5.0 through 7.15.1 may trust a client-supplied X-Forwarded-Uri header when --reverse-proxy is enabled and --skip-auth-regex or --skip-auth-route is configured. An attacker can spoof this header so OAuth2 Proxy evaluates authentication and skip-auth rules against a different path than the one actually sent to the upstream application. This can result in an unauthenticated remote attacker bypassing authentication and accessing protected routes without a valid session. Impacted users are deployments that run oauth2-proxy with --reverse-proxy enabled and configure at least one --skip-auth-regex or --skip-auth-route rule. This issue is patched in v7.15.2. Some workarounds are available for those who cannot upgrade immediately. Strip any client-provided X-Forwarded-Uri header at the reverse proxy or load balancer level; explicitly overwrite X-Forwarded-Uri with the actual request URI before forwarding requests to OAuth2 Proxy; restrict direct client access to OAuth2 Proxy so it can only be reached through a trusted reverse proxy; and/or remove or narrow --skip-auth-regex / --skip-auth-route rules where possible. For nginx-based deployments, ensure X-Forwarded-Uri is set by nginx and not passed through from the client.

Impact

A configuration-dependent authentication bypass exists in OAuth2 Proxy.

Deployments are affected when all of the following are true:

• OAuth2 Proxy is configured with --reverse-proxy
• and at least one rule is defined with --skip_auth_routes or the legacy --skip-auth-regex

OAuth2 Proxy may trust a client-supplied X-Forwarded-Uri header when --reverse-proxy is enabled and --skip-auth-route or --skip-auth-regex is configured. An attacker can spoof this header so OAuth2 Proxy evaluates authentication and skip-auth rules against a different path than the one actually sent to the upstream application.

This can result in an unauthenticated remote attacker bypassing authentication and accessing protected routes without a valid session.

Patches

This issue is addressed as part of the newly introduced --trusted-proxy-ip flag in v7.15.2. If you leave it unset, OAuth2 Proxy will continue to trust ALL source IPs (0.0.0.0/0) for backwards compatibility, which means a client may still be able to spoof forwarded headers. Therefore after upgrading we urge you to use the new --trusted-proxy-ip flag to set the IPs or CIDR ranges of the reverse proxies that are allowed to send X-Forwarded-* headers and furthermore implement the mitigation steps outlined below to properly configure your load balancer infrastructure.

Mitigation

• Strip any client-provided X-Forwarded-Uri header at the reverse proxy or load balancer level

• Explicitly overwrite X-Forwarded-Uri with the actual request URI before forwarding requests to OAuth2 Proxy

  Example nginx mitigation for the auth subrequest:

    location /internal-auth/ {
      internal; # Ensure external users can't access this path
  
      # Make sure the OAuth2 Proxy knows where the original request came from.
      proxy_set_header Host       $host;
      proxy_set_header X-Real-IP  $remote_addr;
      # set the value to the actual $request_uri and therefore strip any user provided X-Forwarded-Uri
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Uri $request_uri;
  
      proxy_pass http://oauth2-proxy:4180/;
    }
  

• Restrict direct client access to OAuth2 Proxy so it can only be reached through a trusted reverse proxy

• Remove or narrow --skip-auth-route / --skip-auth-regex rules where possible

OAuth2 Proxy is a reverse proxy that provides authentication using OAuth2 providers. Versions 7.5.0 through 7.15.1 may trust a client-supplied X-Forwarded-Uri header when --reverse-proxy is enabled and --skip-auth-regex or --skip-auth-route is configured. An attacker can spoof this header so OAuth2 Proxy evaluates authentication and skip-auth rules against a different path than the one actually sent to the upstream application. This can result in an unauthenticated remote attacker bypassing authentication and accessing protected routes without a valid session. Impacted users are deployments that run oauth2-proxy with --reverse-proxy enabled and configure at least one --skip-auth-regex or --skip-auth-route rule. This issue is patched in v7.15.2. Some workarounds are available for those who cannot upgrade immediately. Strip any client-provided X-Forwarded-Uri header at the reverse proxy or load balancer level; explicitly overwrite X-Forwarded-Uri with the actual request URI before forwarding requests to OAuth2 Proxy; restrict direct client access to OAuth2 Proxy so it can only be reached through a trusted reverse proxy; and/or remove or narrow --skip-auth-regex / --skip-auth-route rules where possible. For nginx-based deployments, ensure X-Forwarded-Uri is set by nginx and not passed through from the client.

OAuth2 Proxy is a reverse proxy that provides authentication using OAuth2 providers. Versions 7.5.0 through 7.15.1 may trust a client-supplied X-Forwarded-Uri header when --reverse-proxy is enabled and --skip-auth-regex or --skip-auth-route is configured. An attacker can spoof this header so OAuth2 Proxy evaluates authentication and skip-auth rules against a different path than the one actually sent to the upstream application. This can result in an unauthenticated remote attacker bypassing authentication and accessing protected routes without a valid session. Impacted users are deployments that run oauth2-proxy with --reverse-proxy enabled and configure at least one --skip-auth-regex or --skip-auth-route rule. This issue is patched in v7.15.2. Some workarounds are available for those who cannot upgrade immediately. Strip any client-provided X-Forwarded-Uri header at the reverse proxy or load balancer level; explicitly overwrite X-Forwarded-Uri with the actual request URI before forwarding requests to OAuth2 Proxy; restrict direct client access to OAuth2 Proxy so it can only be reached through a trusted reverse proxy; and/or remove or narrow --skip-auth-regex / --skip-auth-route rules where possible. For nginx-based deployments, ensure X-Forwarded-Uri is set by nginx and not passed through from the client.

OAuth2 Proxy honours a client-supplied X-Forwarded-Uri header when deciding whether a request may skip authentication, because the guard added for CVE-2026-40575 is inert in the default reverse-proxy configuration. GetRequestURI in pkg/requests/util/util.go prefers that header over the real request URI whenever CanTrustForwardedHeaders returns true, and isAllowedPath in oauthproxy.go matches the skip_auth_routes and skip_auth_regex allow list against the resulting path. CanTrustForwardedHeaders in pkg/apis/middleware/scope.go grants that trust when the caller's address is in the trusted proxy set, and buildTrustedProxyNetSet falls back to defaultTrustedProxyIPs, which is 0.0.0.0/0 and ::/0, whenever reverse proxy mode is enabled without trusted_proxy_ip configured. Every client is therefore treated as a trusted proxy. An unauthenticated attacker can request a protected upstream path while setting X-Forwarded-Uri to a value matching an allow-listed route, so the skip-auth decision is made against the spoofed value while the upstream receives the protected path unchanged.