Executive brief
Spring Cloud Gateway, a tool used to route and manage web traffic, contains a vulnerability where it incorrectly trusts identity information provided by external sources. This could allow an attacker to bypass security controls or spoof their original location by providing fake network headers. Organizations using affected versions should update to the latest patched release to ensure their gateway correctly identifies incoming traffic.
Technical details
Spring Cloud Gateway (WebMVC and WebFlux) is vulnerable to an origin validation error (CWE-346) where it fails to properly sanitize or validate 'X-Forwarded-For' and 'Forwarded' headers from untrusted proxies. In specific configuration scenarios, the gateway forwards these headers as-is to downstream services. An unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit this by injecting malicious headers to spoof client IP addresses or bypass IP-based access control lists (ACLs). The vulnerability is resolved in versions 3.1.13, 4.1.13, 4.2.9, 4.3.5, and 5.0.2.
Affected products
- VMware Spring Cloud Gateway 3.1.x prior to 3.1.13, 4.1.x prior to 4.1.13, 4.2.x prior to 4.2.9, 4.3.x prior to 4.3.5, 5.0.x prior to 5.0.2
Timeline
- 2026-06-15: disclosed: CVE published by VMware/NVD