High severity · published Nov 10, 2025
CVE-2025-64484
OAuth2-Proxy vulnerable to header smuggling via underscore, leading to potential privilege escalation
8.5
CVSS
0.7%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
OAuth2-Proxy is an open-source tool that can act as either a standalone reverse proxy or a middleware component integrated into existing reverse proxy or load balancer setups. In versions prior to 7.13.0, all deployments of OAuth2 Proxy in front of applications that normalize underscores to dashes in HTTP headers (e.g., WSGI-based frameworks such as Django, Flask, FastAPI, and PHP applications). Authenticated users can inject underscore variants of X-Forwarded-* headers that bypass the proxy’s filtering logic, potentially escalating privileges in the upstream app. OAuth2 Proxy authentication/authorization itself is not compromised. The problem has been patched with v7.13.0. By default all specified headers will now be normalized, meaning that both capitalization and the use of underscores (_) versus dashes (-) will be ignored when matching headers to be stripped. For example, both `X-Forwarded-For` and `X_Forwarded-for` will now be treated as equivalent and stripped away. For those who have a rational that requires keeping a similar looking header and not stripping it, the maintainers introduced a new configuration field for Headers managed through the AlphaConfig called `InsecureSkipHeaderNormalization`. As a workaround, ensure filtering and processing logic in upstream services don't treat underscores and hyphens in Headers the same way.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:L/A:N
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
Low
Availability
None
Scope
Changed
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.7% · higher than 51% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
OA
oauth2-proxy · oauth2-proxy
< 7.13.0 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-64484
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-64484
datatracker.ietf.org
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2616#section-4.2
datatracker.ietf.org
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc822#section-3.2
github.com
https://github.com/oauth2-proxy/oauth2-proxy/security/advisories/GHSA-vjrc-mh2v-45x6
github.security.telekom.com
https://github.security.telekom.com/2020/05/smuggling-http-headers-through-reverse-proxies.html
www.uptimia.com
https://www.uptimia.com/questions/why-are-http-headers-with-underscores-dropped-by-nginx
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