Resource exhaustion in Traefik
CVE-2026-26998
Traefik is an HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer. Prior to versions 2.11.38 and 3.6.9, there is a potential vulnerability in Traefik managing the ForwardAuth middleware responses. When Traefik is configured to use the ForwardAuth middleware, the response body from the authentication server is read entirely into memory without any size limit. There is no maxResponseBodySize configuration to restrict the amount of data read from the authentication server response. If the authentication server returns an unexpectedly large or unbounded response body, Traefik will allocate unlimited memory, potentially causing an out-of-memory (OOM) condition that crashes the process. This results in a denial of service for all routes served by the affected Traefik instance. This issue has been patched in versions 2.11.38 and 3.6.9.
EPSS: 0.005 (36.9th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 4.4 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.
Affected products
- Traefik — versions < 2.11.38, < 3.6.9
Weakness classification (CWE)
References
- security-advisories@github.com (x_refsource_CONFIRM, Patch, Vendor Advisory)
- security-advisories@github.com (Product, x_refsource_MISC, Release Notes)
- security-advisories@github.com (Product, x_refsource_MISC, Release Notes)
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2026-26998?
- CVE-2026-26998 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Traefik, classified under Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling. CVSS score: 4.4/10. Published 2026-03-05.
- How severe is CVE-2026-26998?
- Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 4.4 out of 10.