CVE-2026-88879

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.

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.

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.

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.

Traefik is an open source HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer. Prior to 2.11.56, and from 3.0.0 until 3.7.12, a client-supplied dot-form header such as X.Authenticated.User survives ForwardAuth replacement and underscoreHeadersStrategy because Go treats it as distinct from X-Authenticated-User while normalization-prone CGI, WSGI, PHP, and NGINX backends collapse both names. A backend can consequently consume the client value instead of the identity Traefik asserted, allowing identity spoofing for any header managed by Traefik. The aliasHeadersStrategy protection is disabled by default and must be configured as delete or reject. The mitigation is available in 2.11.56 and 3.7.12.

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.

Summary

There is a medium severity vulnerability in Traefik's handling of request headers whose name aliases another header name. Go canonicalizes header names on dashes only, so X-Auth-User, X_Auth_User and X.Auth.User are three distinct headers to Traefik, while backends that derive variable names from header names (CGI, WSGI, PHP, NGINX, and others) collapse all of them into the same variable. A client can therefore smuggle an alias of a header that Traefik manages past the middleware managing it — for example a dot-form X.Authenticated.User alongside the canonical X-Authenticated-User written by the ForwardAuth middleware — and have such a backend read the client-supplied value instead of the identity Traefik asserted. Any header Traefik sets is exposed, not only ForwardAuth's. This is an incomplete-fix sibling of GHSA-x677-9fxg-v5c5, which blocked only the underscore form.

The mitigation is the new aliasHeadersStrategy entry point option. It defaults to keep, which preserves the previous behavior for backwards compatibility, so it must be explicitly set to delete or reject to take effect.

Traefik v1.x, the v2 releases up to v2.11.55 and the v3 releases from v3.0.0 to v3.7.11 are affected. The unmaintained lines among them will not receive a patch of their own, and the remedy for their users is to upgrade to v2.11.56 or v3.7.12 and set aliasHeadersStrategy.

Patches

• https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v2.11.56
• https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.7.12

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, please open an issue.

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

Summary

Traefik's ForwardAuth middleware removes the configured canonical identity header before copying the value returned by the auth service. However, a client-supplied dot-form alias such as X.Authenticated.User survives both this replacement and underscoreHeadersStrategy: delete.

The tested PHP 8.2 built-in SAPI maps X-Authenticated-User and X.Authenticated.User to the same HTTP_X_AUTHENTICATED_USER server variable. In Traefik's tested HTTP/1 backend path, the client value is serialized last and overrides the identity asserted by ForwardAuth.

A client whom ForwardAuth permits as a lower-privilege identity can therefore be treated by the backend as another user or role.

Details

At v3.7.10, pkg/server/server_entrypoint_tcp.go:800-818 removes or rejects only names containing _. After successful authentication, pkg/middlewares/auth/forward.go:314-326 deletes and replaces only the canonical authResponseHeaders key. The dot alias remains in req.Header and the standard reverse proxy forwards both legal field names.

Go's HTTP/1 writer sorts header names lexically, placing X-Authenticated-User before X.Authenticated.User. PHP then collapses both into one $_SERVER key, so the attacker value deterministically wins.

This is an incomplete-fix sibling of GHSA-x677-9fxg-v5c5: the published underscore input is blocked by the new entry-point strategy, while the dot input bypasses that mitigation on the current stable release.

PoC

traefik-dot-forwardauth-poc.zip

run:

docker compose up -d
bash verify.sh
docker compose down

The decisive request is:

GET /probe HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1:18080
X.Authenticated.User: admin
Connection: close

Expected backend identity: lab-user, as returned by ForwardAuth.

Observed on v3.7.10: admin.

The script also verifies that requests without the alias, with the canonical header, and with the already-fixed underscore alias all produce lab-user.

Impact

Applications that authorize requests using a ForwardAuth-provided identity header can receive an attacker-selected username or role instead. This was runtime-verified with PHP…

Traefik: ForwardAuth identity spoofing via dot-form header alias in github.com/traefik/traefik