Traefik: Cross-user response poisoning via proxied CONNECT on Traefik's shared backend keep-alive pool

Confirmed on the official image traefik:v3.6.23 (a currently supported release), default configuration, against stock go-httpbin (Go) and kennethreitz/httpbin (Python gunicorn/Flask), attacker and victim in separate containers, over both HTTP/2 and HTTP/3.

Affected

• traefik:v3.6.23 (official image) and current v3, default configuration, standard proxy to an HTTP/1.1 upstream. Backend keep-alive pooling is on by default (MaxIdleConnsPerHost 200).
• Attacker frontend is HTTP/2 or HTTP/3. An HTTP/1.1 frontend is not affected.
• The upstream keeps the connection alive after a non-2xx to the forwarded CONNECT and does not drain the body.
• The experimental FastProxy implementation is not affected (see Not affected).

Details

Three behaviors compose.

1. Traefik forwards a plain CONNECT as an ordinary proxied request. The default proxy is httputil.ReverseProxy with a shared http.Transport (pkg/proxy/httputil/proxy.go). The director assigns the outbound URL.Host directly and does not reject CONNECT, leaving the request body a live stream. The client places a raw HTTP/1.1 request in that body (H2/H3 DATA frames), which is written onto the backend socket after the CONNECT header block.

2. net/http writes the CONNECT body unframed and pools the socket. For a CONNECT the transport writes the body with no Content-Length and no Transfer-Encoding. The upstream answers a keep-alive non-2xx and parses the trailing bytes as a pipelined request. Go reads the non-2xx response and returns the socket to the shared idle pool once the request body reaches EOF (the wroteRequest gate), while the smuggled request's response is still pending.

3. Desynchronized reuse. The smuggled request targets a slow endpoint so its response arrives after the socket is pooled. A different client that reuses the socket reads the pending smuggled response as its own.

sanitizePath (default true, pkg/server/server_entrypoint_tcp.go) calls req.URL.JoinPath(), which turns the CONNECT's empty path into /. Traefik emits CONNECT /. Whether that stops the smuggle depends only on the backend: Apache and nginx answer 400 Bad Request with Connection: close (socket torn down, no cross); Go net/http and gunicorn/Flask answer a keep-alive non-2xx and pipeline the trailing bytes (cross). With sanitizePath off, Traefik emits authority-form CONNECT host:port, which Apache answers with a keep-alive 405.

HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 only. Pooling requires the forwarded request body to reach EOF. An H2/H3 client half-closes the CONNECT stream (END_STREAM), so the body reaches EOF while the connection stays open and the socket is pooled. An H1 CONNECT body is the tunnel and cannot reach EOF without closing the connection, so the socket is closed, not pooled. HTTP/3 routes to the same handler chain as HTTPS.

Backend behavior

"Armed" means the backend answers with a keep-alive non-2xx and parses the trailing undrained bytes as a pipelined request. Default Traefik emits CONNECT /; with sanitizePath: false it emits authority-form CONNECT host:port.

Impact

Unauthenticated cross-user HTTP response poisoning. One client receives another client's response, which can be authenticated or private content, or an attacker-chosen response.

Blast radius depends on the pool. With the default pool and a slow smuggled endpoint the crossing is reliable for a converging victim. With a bounded pool one desync shifts the whole response queue: measured with MaxIdleConnsPerHost 1 and a slow victim endpoint, 8 of 8 sequential victims read a response that was not their own (1 the attacker's, 7 another user's, 0 their own). Traefik does not expose MaxConnsPerHost, so the parallel cascade is weaker than Caddy's.

Proof of concept

poc/run.sh runs the official traefik:v3.6.23 image fronting real off-the-shelf backends over HTTP/1.1, with attacker and victim in separate containers. Requires docker and python3. It builds the attack client, pulls the stock images, and runs the scenarios below.

The attacker opens an H2 or H3 CONNECT to Traefik and sends a raw HTTP/1.1 GET /delay/2?tag=ATTACKERSMUGGLED as the CONNECT body, then half-closes the stream. Traefik forwards the CONNECT to the Go/Python backend, the backend answers a keep-alive non-2xx, keeps the socket, and parses the trailing GET as a pipelined request, so a response to it is queued on that socket. net/http returns the socket to Traefik's shared pool. The victim then sends GET /get?tag=VICTIMOWN on its own connection, Traefik reuses the pooled backend socket, and the victim reads the queued /delay response instead of its own. CROSS means the victim received a response that was not its own.

Expected output from poc

== core: DEFAULT config, cross-user poisoning vs real off-the-shelf backends ==
  [core-go-h2] h2->h2 CROSS
  [core-go-h3] h3->h3 CROSS
  [core-go-x] h2->h3 CROSS
  [core-py-h2] h2->h2 CROSS
  [core-py-h3] h3->h3 CROSS
== mechanism: sanitizePath off -> stock Apache 405 (the direct Caddy analogue) ==
  [mech-ap-h2] h2->h2 CROSS
  [mech-ap-h3] h3->h3 CROSS
== controls: must NOT cross ==
  [ctl-apache] h2->h2 NO_CROSS
  [ctl-pooloff] h2->h2 NO_CROSS
  [ctl-kaoff] h2->h2 NO_CROSS
== safe variant: experimental FastProxy chunk-frames the CONNECT body ==
  [safe-fast] h2->h2 NO_CROSS
== cascade: bounded pool, one desync poisons a queue of victims ==
  smuggled=1 other_user=7 own=0 of 8 (cross-user poisoned=8)
RESULT: PASS

• Core rows. DEFAULT Traefik config against a Go backend (go-httpbin) and a Python gunicorn/Flask backend (kennethreitz/httpbin), for H2->H2, H3->H3, and H2->H3. The victim reads the attacker's smuggled response.
• Mechanism rows. sanitizePath off and stock Apache. Traefik emits authority-form CONNECT apache-backend:80, Apache answers a keep-alive 405, and it crosses. This is the direct Caddy analogue and proves the full mechanism including Apache.
• Control rows. ctl-apache runs the default config against Apache, which closes CONNECT /; ctl-pooloff disables Traefik backend reuse (maxIdleConnsPerHost: -1); ctl-kaoff runs Apache with KeepAlive Off. All three print NO_CROSS, so the crossing depends on backend socket reuse, not pipelining or a shared client.
• Safe variant. Experimental FastProxy against the Go backend prints NO_CROSS because it chunk-frames the CONNECT body.
• Cascade. MaxIdleConnsPerHost 1 and a slow victim endpoint. One CONNECT desync shifts the queue: of 8 sequential victims, 1 reads the attacker's smuggled response, 7 read another user's response, 0 read their own.

The captured crossing (poc/evidence/RELEASE_v3.6.23_victim.json): the victim sent GET /get?tag=VICTIM_OWN and received a 200 whose body is the response to GET /delay/2?tag=ATTACKER_SMUGGLED with the echoed header X-Smuggled: released-v3.6.23, none of which the victim sent.

Not affected

• HTTP/1.1 frontend. An H1 CONNECT body cannot reach EOF without closing the connection, so the backend socket is not pooled.
• Experimental FastProxy (experimental.fastProxy). It chunk-frames the forwarded CONNECT body (Transfer-Encoding: chunked, captured in poc/evidence/wire_fastproxy_chunked.txt), so the trailing bytes are read as the CONNECT body, not a pipelined request. safe-fast is NO_CROSS.

ForwardAuth

The ForwardAuth middleware with forwardBody: true and preserveRequestMethod: true re-issues the request to the auth server as a CONNECT with the buffered body re-attached and ContentLength never set (pkg/middlewares/auth/forward.go). The auth client writes that body unframed to the auth server (captured on the wire), so a keep-alive non-2xx from the auth server poisons the shared auth-client pool the same way.

Root cause

net/http pools a connection after a keep-alive non-2xx response to a CONNECT whose body it wrote unframed. Traefik's default proxy forwards client CONNECT through a shared net/http.Transport and applies no CONNECT rejection. sanitizePath changes the emitted request target but does not remove the defect. Traefik's own FastProxy implementation frames the CONNECT body and does not cross, which shows this is a property of the httputil/net/http path, not fixed by path normalization.

POC

poc.zip