Vulnerability in Envoyproxy Envoy

CVE-2026-73548

Envoy is an open source edge and service proxy designed for cloud-native applications. Prior to 1.36.10, 1.37.6, 1.38.4, and 1.39.1, Envoy forwards data for a configured non-WebSocket HTTP upgrade before the upstream accepts the upgrade. An unauthenticated HTTP/2 client can place a complete HTTP/1.1 request in extended CONNECT data; Envoy downgrades the request, writes the data unframed to a keep-alive HTTP/1.1 upstream, and returns the socket to the shared pool while the smuggled response remains queued. A different downstream client can then receive the attacker's response. The relevant scope boundary is that webSocket upgrades, plain CONNECT, disabled backend keep-alive, per-downstream pools, and max_requests_per_connection set to 1 are not affected by the demonstrated path. This issue is fixed in versions 1.36.10, 1.37.6, 1.38.4, and 1.39.1.

Vulnerability class: HTTP Request Smuggling

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.005 (40.3th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 40th percentile — 40.3% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-73548: held from 0.005 to 0.005.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.005 · newest: 0.005 · change: 0.000

Affected products

  • Envoyproxy Envoy — versions < 1.36.10, >= 1.37.0, < 1.37.6, >= 1.38.0, < 1.38.4

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-73548?
CVE-2026-73548 is a high-severity vulnerability in Envoyproxy Envoy, classified under Inconsistent Interpretation of HTTP Requests (HTTP Request/Response Smuggling). CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2026-09-21.
How severe is CVE-2026-73548?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.