CVE-2026-46356
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.
Does this matter?
Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.28%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.
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 4.0
- 6.9 MEDIUMCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/M
- EPSS
- 0.28% probability · 20th percentile
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-290
- Affected
- fleetdm/fleet
- Source
- security-advisories@github.com
References
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.