GHSA-xq2h-p299-vjwv — pingora-core
GHSA-xq2h-p299-vjwv is a CWE-444 vulnerability in pingora-core. A fix is available for pingora-core — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Pingora vulnerable to HTTP Request Smuggling via Premature Upgrade
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-xq2h-p299-vjwv.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
Real-World Exposure
pingora-coreReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects crates.io packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
Pingora versions prior to 0.8.0 would immediately forward bytes following a request with an Upgrade header to the backend, without waiting for a 101 Switching Protocols response. This allows an attacker to smuggle requests to the backend and bypass proxy-level security controls.
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, or perform cross-user attacks by hijacking sessions.
Note: Cloudflare customers and Cloudflare's CDN infrastructure were 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.
Patches
Pingora users should upgrade to Pingora v0.8.0 or higher, which fixes this issue by only switching connection modes after receiving a 101 Switching Protocols response from the backend (hash 824bdeefc61e121cc8861de1b35e8e8f39026ecd). Without a 101 response, subsequent bytes continue to be parsed as HTTP requests.
Workarounds
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.
References
See CVE-2026-2833 and the Cloudflare blog post for more details.
Credits
Disclosed responsibly by Rajat Raghav (@xclow3n) through the Cloudflare Bug Bounty Program.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | pingora-core | all versions | 0.8.0cargo update -p pingora-core --precise 0.8.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for pingora-core, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update pingora-core to 0.8.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-xq2h-p299-vjwv is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-xq2h-p299-vjwv can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-xq2h-p299-vjwv. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-xq2h-p299-vjwv in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-xq2h-p299-vjwv across crates.io dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.