CVE-2026-2833
Received Received - Intake
HTTP Request Smuggling in Pingora Proxy Enables Session Hijacking

Publication date: 2026-03-05

Last updated on: 2026-03-12

Assigner: Cloudflare, Inc.

Description
An HTTP request smuggling vulnerability (CWE-444) was found in Pingora's handling of HTTP/1.1 connection upgrades. The issue occurs when a Pingora proxy reads a request containing an Upgrade header, causing the proxy to pass through the rest of the bytes on the connection to a backend before the backend has accepted the upgrade. An attacker can thus directly forward a malicious payload after a request with an Upgrade header to that backend in a way that may be interpreted as a subsequent request header, bypassing proxy-level security controls and enabling cross-user session hijacking. Impact This vulnerability primarily affects standalone Pingora deployments where a Pingora proxy is exposed to external traffic. An attacker could exploit this to: * Bypass proxy-level ACL controls and WAF logic * Poison caches and upstream connections, causing subsequent requests from legitimate users to receive responses intended for smuggled requests * Perform cross-user attacks by hijacking sessions or smuggling requests that appear to originate from the trusted proxy IP Cloudflare's CDN infrastructure was not affected by this vulnerability, as ingress proxies in the CDN stack maintain proper HTTP parsing boundaries and do not prematurely switch to upgraded connection forwarding mode. Mitigation: Pingora users should upgrade to Pingora v0.8.0 or higher As a workaround, users may return an error on requests with the Upgrade header present in their request filter logic in order to stop processing bytes beyond the request header and disable downstream connection reuse.
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Meta Information
Published
2026-03-05
Last Modified
2026-03-12
Generated
2026-05-27
AI Q&A
2026-03-05
EPSS Evaluated
2026-05-25
NVD
EUVD
Affected Vendors & Products
Showing 1 associated CPE
Vendor Product Version / Range
cloudflare pingora to 0.8.0 (exc)
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
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KEV
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CWE ID Description
CWE-444 The product acts as an intermediary HTTP agent (such as a proxy or firewall) in the data flow between two entities such as a client and server, but it does not interpret malformed HTTP requests or responses in ways that are consistent with how the messages will be processed by those entities that are at the ultimate destination.
Attack-Flow Graph
AI Powered Q&A
Can you explain this vulnerability to me?

This vulnerability is an HTTP request smuggling issue found in Pingora's handling of HTTP/1.1 connection upgrades. When a Pingora proxy processes a request containing an Upgrade header, it prematurely forwards the remaining bytes on the connection to the backend before the backend has accepted the upgrade. This allows an attacker to send a malicious payload directly to the backend, which may be interpreted as a subsequent request header. As a result, the attacker can bypass proxy-level security controls and potentially hijack sessions across users.


How can this vulnerability impact me? :

This vulnerability primarily impacts standalone Pingora deployments exposed to external traffic. An attacker exploiting this flaw could:

  • Bypass proxy-level access control lists (ACL) and web application firewall (WAF) logic.
  • Poison caches and upstream connections, causing legitimate users to receive responses intended for smuggled requests.
  • Perform cross-user attacks by hijacking sessions or smuggling requests that appear to come from the trusted proxy IP.

How does this vulnerability affect compliance with common standards and regulations (like GDPR, HIPAA)?:

I don't know


How can this vulnerability be detected on my network or system? Can you suggest some commands?

I don't know


What immediate steps should I take to mitigate this vulnerability?

To mitigate this vulnerability, Pingora users should upgrade to Pingora version 0.8.0 or higher.

As a workaround, users may configure their request filter logic to return an error on requests containing the Upgrade header. This prevents processing bytes beyond the request header and disables downstream connection reuse, thereby mitigating the vulnerability.


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