High · published October 14, 2026
An authentication and authorization bypass vulnerability exists in F5 NGINX Kubernetes Ingress Controller (NIC) when configured with the `ExternalAuth` policy or Ingress external authentication. Client-supplied X-Forwarded-Prefix, X-Forwarded-URI, X-Original-URI, and X-Forwarded-Method routing and method headers are forwarded unsanitized into the internal authentication subrequest (handled by the NGINX auth_request directive). As a result, an unauthenticated, remote attacker may spoof request attributes evaluated by the external authentication provider.
Impact:
This vulnerability may allow remote attackers
unauthenticated
access to protected
paths. There is no control plane exposure; this is a data plane issue only.
Note: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated.