critical CVSS 10 EPSS 0.78%

CVE-2026-48020·Traefik vulnerability

Traefik is an HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer. Prior to 2.11.48, 3.6.19, and 3.7.3, there is a high severity vulnerability in Traefik's StripPrefix middleware that allows an unauthenticated attacker to bypass route-level authentication and authorization. When a public router matches on a PathPrefix rule and applies the StripPrefix middleware, a request path containing .. or its percent-encoded form %2e%2e can match the public route at routing time and then, after the prefix is stripped and the path is normalized, resolve to a path served by a separate, authenticated router. As a result, an attacker can reach protected backend paths — such as admin or internal configuration endpoints — without satisfying the authentication middleware attached to the protected router. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.11.48, 3.6.19, and 3.7.3.

Severity
critical
Software
Traefik
Fixed in
3.7.3
Published

How likely is exploitation

FIRST's Exploit Prediction Scoring System puts the probability of this CVE being exploited in the next 30 days at 0.78% — higher than 55% of all published CVEs. EPSS is an independent forecast of exploitation, not a severity rating: it says nothing about how much damage a successful attack does, which is what a CVSS score measures.

Read the two together. CVE-2026-48020 scores 10 on CVSS, so a successful attack would be serious — but at 0.78%, almost nobody is currently attempting it. That is a different situation from a flaw under mass exploitation, and it is usually the difference between patching on your next maintenance window and patching tonight.

Affected versions

From: 3.7.0

Until: 3.7.3

Fixed in: 3.7.3

How to fix this CVE

Upgrade Traefik immediately to version 3.7.3 or later to patch a critical authentication bypass vulnerability in the StripPrefix middleware. The vulnerability allows attackers to bypass route-level access controls by crafting requests with path traversal sequences. If you cannot upgrade immediately, disable or reconfigure StripPrefix middleware rules that protect sensitive endpoints until the patch is applied.

sudo dnf update traefik-3.7.3 || sudo dnf install traefik-3.7.3

Defensia detects this vulnerability

What an exploitation attempt looks like

Sample log line indicative of exploitation attempts:

POST|GET|PUT|DELETE .*(\.\.|"%2e%2e")[/\w]* — Log lines showing requests with path traversal sequences matching public PathPrefix routes but resolving to authenticated endpoints after stripping.

WAF mitigation (if patching is not yet possible)

Add this rule to your WAF to block exploitation attempts while you schedule the patch. 

Configure WAF rules to block HTTP requests containing unencoded '..' and percent-encoded '%2e%2e' sequences in the URL path. Implement strict path validation before Traefik's routing engine processes the request, or temporarily block access to admin/protected endpoints at the WAF level until Traefik is patched.

How to check if you are affected

  1. Run 'traefik version' or check the version in your Traefik configuration dashboard to identify the currently deployed version.
  2. Audit your Traefik configuration file (usually traefik.yml or dynamic config) for StripPrefix middleware attached to public routes with PathPrefix rules.
  3. Search Traefik access logs for requests containing '..' or '%2e%2e' in the path that match public route patterns but resolve to protected endpoints after normalization.
  4. After upgrading to 3.7.3, re-run 'traefik version' and restart the service to confirm the fix is active: 'sudo systemctl restart traefik'.

FAQ

What is CVE-2026-48020?

CVE-2026-48020 is a critical authentication bypass vulnerability in Traefik's StripPrefix middleware that enables unauthenticated attackers to access protected backend services. The flaw allows path traversal sequences like '..' to circumvent authentication checks when combined with prefix stripping and path normalization.

Is CVE-2026-48020 being actively exploited?

No, CVE-2026-48020 is not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog and no public exploits are available, though the critical CVSS 10 score warrants immediate patching.

What versions of Traefik are affected by CVE-2026-48020?

Traefik versions 3.7.0 through 3.7.2 are affected. Version 3.7.3 and later contain the fix, as do patched versions 2.11.48 and 3.6.19.

How do I check if my server is vulnerable to CVE-2026-48020?

Run 'traefik version' and compare the output to 3.7.3; if your version is 3.7.0-3.7.2, you are vulnerable. Also check 'grep -r StripPrefix /etc/traefik/' to confirm the middleware is in use.

Does Defensia detect CVE-2026-48020?

Yes — Defensia's CVE advisory scanner compares installed package versions against the NVD database. If Traefik is installed on a monitored server, CVE-2026-48020 will appear in your dashboard with remediation steps.

Related Traefik CVEs

CVE-2026-53622CVSS 10Traefik is an HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer. Versions prior to 3.7.3, 3.6.18, and 2.11.51 have a critical vulnerability in Traefik's HTTP/3 (QUIC) TLS configuration selection that allows unauthenticated clients to bypass router-specific mTLS enforcement. When HTTP/3 is enabled on an entrypoint, the TLS handshake selects the applicable TLS configuration through an exact, case-sensitive lookup on the SNI value, which fails to match wildcard host patterns (e.g., *.example.com) or case variants of the configured hostname. Because the handshake falls back to the default TLS configuration — which may not require client certificates — a client can complete the QUIC handshake without presenting a certificate, while the subsequent HTTP routing layer still dispatches the request to a backend protected by a router-specific mTLS policy. The issue affects deployments where HTTP/3 is enabled, a router uses a wildcard Host rule or case-insensitive hostname matching, a router-specific TLSOptions enforces client certificate authentication, and UDP access to the entrypoint is reachable by an attacker. This vulnerability is fixed in versions 3.7.3, 3.6.18, and 2.11.51.
CVE-2026-54763CVSS 10Traefik is an HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer. Prior to v2.11.51, v3.6.22, and v3.7.6, Traefik's BasicAuth, DigestAuth, and ForwardAuth middlewares strip canonical-cased spoofed identity headers before writing Traefik's own value, but do not account for underscore-variant header names, which many backends normalize identically to dashed forms. An attacker able to reach a protected route can 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 issue is fixed in versions v2.11.51, v3.6.22, and v3.7.6.
CVE-2026-48491CVSS 10Traefik is an HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer. From 3.7.0 until 3.7.3, there is a high severity vulnerability in Traefik's domain-fronting protection (SNICheck) that allows an unauthenticated client to bypass mutual TLS enforced through wildcard router TLSOptions. When a router uses a wildcard host rule such as Host(*.example.com) with stricter TLS options (for example RequireAndVerifyClientCert), SNICheck resolves the TLS options for the HTTP Host header using exact map lookups only and never applies wildcard matching. If another permissive SNI is served on the same entrypoint, an attacker can complete the TLS handshake under the permissive options and then send an HTTP Host header targeting the wildcard-protected backend, reaching it without presenting a client certificate. This affects the regular HTTPS / HTTP-2 path and does not require HTTP/3. This vulnerability is fixed in 3.7.3.
CVE-2026-44774CVSS 9.9Traefik is an HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer. Prior to 2.11.46, 3.6.17, and 3.7.1, Traefik's Kubernetes Gateway API provider allows a tenant with HTTPRoute creation permissions to expose the REST provider handler, bypassing the providers.rest.insecure=false setting. The Gateway provider accepts any TraefikService backend reference whose name ends with @internal, making it possible to route traffic to rest@internal in addition to the intended api@internal. In shared Gateway deployments where the REST provider is enabled, this allows a low-privileged actor to gain live dynamic configuration write access to Traefik, enabling unauthorized reconfiguration of routers and services. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.11.46, 3.6.17, and 3.7.1.
CVE-2026-85595CVSS 9.8Traefik versions before v2.11.55 and versions v3.0.0 through v3.7.10 contain an authentication bypass vulnerability in the digestAuth middleware where unknown usernames receive an empty secret instead of rejection. Attackers can compute a valid digest response using the empty secret and arbitrary credentials to bypass authentication on any digestAuth-protected route without a valid username or password.

References

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