CVE-2026-46356: Fleet: IP spoofing allows bypassing API rate limiting

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-05-14 · updated 2026-10-26
Weakness: CWE-290

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.

Affected products

fleetdm fleet: before 4.80.1 — fixed in 4.80.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: fleetdm fleet 4.80.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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