Affects F5 NGINX Kubernetes Ingress Controller used widely in enterprise K8s environments; unauthenticated auth bypass to protected paths is high-impact for many orgs.
CVE-2026-94197
Auth bypass in F5 NGINX Kubernetes Ingress Controller via unsanitized X-Forwarded headers.
Is CVE-2026-94197 being exploited?
Not confirmed. CVE-2026-94197 does not appear in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, which records only exploitation that has been observed and reported publicly. That is evidence of absence of a report, not evidence the flaw is unattacked. EPSS currently estimates a 0.39% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.
How severe is CVE-2026-94197?
CVE-2026-94197 is rated High with a CVSS score of 8.7. Severity describes how bad exploitation would be, not how likely it is: pair it with exploitation evidence before deciding what to patch first.
Is there a patch for CVE-2026-94197?
Not known from our data. No patch reference has been recorded for CVE-2026-94197, which is not the same as no patch existing — a fix may have shipped without a tagged reference, or after this record was written. The vendor advisory is the only authority on whether a fix exists, and mitigations may be available regardless.
What does CVE-2026-94197 affect?
CVE-2026-94197 affects F5 NGINX Kubernetes Ingress Controller (NIC), Kubernetes Ingress configured with ExternalAuth / external authentication. Confirm the exact affected versions against the vendor advisory before deciding you are exposed.
What should I do about CVE-2026-94197?
Patch when available; sanitize/block X-Forwarded-* headers or disable/restrict ExternalAuth.
Exploitation status reflects CISA's KEV catalog as we last synced it. Check the catalog directly.
Unauthenticated attackers can spoof X-Forwarded-* headers to bypass ExternalAuth and gain access to protected paths on the data plane.
Immediate action required
- affected>= 5.5.0 and < 5.7.0
As published in the CVE Program record. A version outside these ranges is not a statement that it is unaffected — vendors sometimes understate a range, and distribution-backported builds carry upstream numbers that do not reflect what was patched into them.