Auth Bypass in F5 NGINX NIC External Auth Routing
CVE-2026-94197 Published on October 14, 2026

NGINX Ingress Controller vulnerability
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.

Vendor Advisory NVD

Vulnerability Analysis

CVE-2026-94197 can be exploited with network access, and does not require authorization privileges or user interaction. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have a high impact on confidentiality, with no impact on integrity and availability.

Exploitation:
NONE
Automatable:
YES
Technical Impact:
PARTIAL
Attack Vector:
NETWORK
Attack Complexity:
LOW
Privileges Required:
NONE
User Interaction:
NONE
Scope:
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact:
HIGH
Integrity Impact:
NONE
Availability Impact:
NONE

Weakness Type

Authentication Bypass by Spoofing

This attack-focused weakness is caused by improperly implemented authentication schemes that are subject to spoofing attacks.


Products Associated with CVE-2026-94197

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F5 Networks Nginx Ingress Controller

Affected Versions

F5 NGINX Ingress Controller: