CVE-2024-47070: authentik vulnerable to password authentication bypass via X-Forwarded-For HTTP header

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.0 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2024-09-27 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-287

Description

authentik is an open-source identity provider. A vulnerability that exists in versions prior to 2024.8.3 and 2024.6.5 allows bypassing password login by adding X-Forwarded-For header with an unparsable IP address, e.g. `a`. This results in a possibility of logging into any account with a known login or email address. The vulnerability requires the authentik instance to trust X-Forwarded-For header provided by the attacker, thus it is not reproducible from external hosts on a properly configured environment. The issue occurs due to the password stage having a policy bound to it, which skips the password stage if the Identification stage is setup to also contain a password stage. Due to the invalid X-Forwarded-For header, which does not get validated to be an IP Address early enough, the exception happens later and the policy fails. The default blueprint doesn't correctly set `failure_result` to `True` on the policy binding meaning that due to this exception the policy returns false and the password stage is skipped. Versions 2024.8.3 and 2024.6.5 fix this issue.

Affected products

goauthentik authentik: before 2024.6.5; from 2024.8.0 before 2024.8.3 — fixed in 2024.6.5, 2024.8.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: goauthentik authentik 2024.6.5, 2024.8.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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