Critical severity · published Sep 10, 2026
CVE-2026-88018
rclone serve s3: --auth-proxy without --auth-key authenticates nobody - full SigV4 signature bypass
9.8
CVSS
0.5%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
rclone is a command-line program to sync files and directories to and from different cloud storage providers. Prior to 1.75.1, rclone serve s3 configured with --auth-proxy but without --auth-key allows authPairMiddleware to register any client-chosen accessKeyID with an empty ws.s3Secret. gofakes3 then verifies the request’s SigV4 signature against that same empty secret, while Server.auth passes the access key identifier as both the user and authentication value to the proxy without an independent per-identity secret. An unauthenticated network attacker can therefore choose an arbitrary access key, sign with an empty secret, and reach whatever backend the auth-proxy script resolves for that identity. This issue is fixed in version 1.75.1.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.5% · higher than 43% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
RC
rclone · rclone
< 1.75.1 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-88018
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-88018
Patch
https://github.com/rclone/rclone/commit/90595f34f27f569be6b27c57fe5ab65057d323bd
Release Notes
https://github.com/rclone/rclone/releases/tag/v1.75.1
Vendor Advisory
https://github.com/rclone/rclone/security/advisories/GHSA-xwwr-4h3p-r22c
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