High severity · published May 14, 2026
CVE-2026-46356
Fleet: IP spoofing allows bypassing API rate limiting
7.5
CVSS
0.3%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Fleet is open source device management software. Prior to version 4.80.1, a vulnerability in Fleet's IP extraction logic allows unauthenticated attackers to bypass API rate limiting by spoofing client IP headers. This may allow brute-force login attempts or other abuse against Fleet instances exposed to the public internet. Fleet extracted client IP addresses from request headers (`True-Client-IP`, `X-Real-IP`, `X-Forwarded-For`) without validating that those headers originate from a trusted proxy. The extracted IP is used as the key for rate limiting and IP ban decisions. As a result, an attacker could rotate the value of these headers on each request, causing Fleet to treat each attempt as coming from a different client. This effectively bypasses per-IP rate limits on sensitive endpoints such as the login API, enabling unrestricted brute-force or credential stuffing attacks. This issue primarily affects Fleet instances that are directly exposed to the internet without a reverse proxy that overwrites forwarded-IP headers. Instances behind a properly configured proxy or WAF are less affected. Version 4.80.1 contains a patch. If an immediate upgrade is not possible, administrators should ensure Fleet is deployed behind a reverse proxy (e.g., nginx, Cloudflare, AWS ALB) that overwrites `X-Forwarded-For` with the true client IP, and apply rate limiting at the proxy or WAF layer.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
High
Availability
None
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.3% · higher than 20% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
FL
fleet · fleetdm
< 4.80.1 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-46356
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-46356
Release Notes
https://github.com/fleetdm/fleet/releases/tag/fleet-v4.80.1
Vendor Advisory
https://github.com/fleetdm/fleet/security/advisories/GHSA-mxmp-wr3w-rvqx
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