High severity · published Sep 21, 2026
CVE-2026-73552
Envoy: HTTP RBAC safe_regex can fail open on RFC-valid obs-text header values
7.5
CVSS
0.5%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Envoy is an open source edge and service proxy designed for cloud-native applications. Prior to 1.36.10, 1.37.6, 1.38.4, and 1.39.1, Envoy HTTP RBAC accepts RFC-valid opaque header bytes but evaluates safe_regex values with RE2's UTF-8 subject semantics. A downstream client can preserve a prohibited marker and add an unrelated obs-text octet, causing RE2::FullMatch to return false and a negative RBAC policy to treat the invalid subject as an ordinary no-match. A byte-oriented route matcher can still observe the marker, allowing the request to reach a route intended to be denied. The relevant scope boundary is that plain positive ALLOW regexes normally fail closed, and exact, prefix, suffix, and contains matchers are not shown to have this subject-domain failure. This issue is fixed in versions 1.36.10, 1.37.6, 1.38.4, and 1.39.1.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.5% · higher than 42% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
EN
envoy · envoyproxy
< 1.36.10; >= 1.37.0, < 1.37.6; >= 1.38.0, < 1.38.4; >= 1.39.0, < 1.39.1 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-73552
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-73552
Patch
https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/commit/5650cb9770d4420ec2bcbed8b90be06f564ecc07
Patch
https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/commit/7d1dee5dda66434d84437cc5c85153aa03955e26
Patch
https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/commit/c2b9a19dc081f03be6a9b4ca932673e5e7a33d18
Patch
https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/commit/f3726765f3a12ddc76dcb52c0b79bec3d95ced1c
Release Notes
https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/releases/tag/v1.36.10
Release Notes
https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/releases/tag/v1.37.6
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