CVE-2026-33494: Ory Oathkeeper has a path traversal authorization bypass

Severity: critical (CVSS 10.0 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-03-26 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-23

Description

ORY Oathkeeper is an Identity & Access Proxy (IAP) and Access Control Decision API that authorizes HTTP requests based on sets of Access Rules. Versions prior to 26.2.0 are vulnerable to an authorization bypass via HTTP path traversal. An attacker can craft a URL containing path traversal sequences (e.g. `/public/../admin/secrets`) that resolves to a protected path after normalization, but is matched against a permissive rule because the raw, un-normalized path is used during rule evaluation. Version 26.2.0 contains a patch.

Affected products

ory oathkeeper: before 26.2.0 — fixed in 26.2.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: ory oathkeeper 26.2.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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