CVE-2026-73548: Envoy: Cross-user response poisoning via a generic (non-WebSocket) HTTP upgrade on Envoy's shared backend pool

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 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: yes
Published: 2026-09-21 · updated 2026-10-05
Weakness: CWE-444

Description

Envoy is an open source edge and service proxy designed for cloud-native applications. Prior to 1.36.10, 1.37.6, 1.38.4, and 1.39.1, Envoy forwards data for a configured non-WebSocket HTTP upgrade before the upstream accepts the upgrade. An unauthenticated HTTP/2 client can place a complete HTTP/1.1 request in extended CONNECT data; Envoy downgrades the request, writes the data unframed to a keep-alive HTTP/1.1 upstream, and returns the socket to the shared pool while the smuggled response remains queued. A different downstream client can then receive the attacker's response. The relevant scope boundary is that webSocket upgrades, plain CONNECT, disabled backend keep-alive, per-downstream pools, and max_requests_per_connection set to 1 are not affected by the demonstrated path. This issue is fixed in versions 1.36.10, 1.37.6, 1.38.4, and 1.39.1.

Affected products

envoyproxy envoy: before 1.36.10; from 1.37.0 before 1.37.6; from 1.38.0 before 1.38.4; from 1.39.0 before 1.39.1 — fixed in 1.36.10, 1.37.6, 1.38.4, 1.39.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: envoyproxy envoy 1.36.10, 1.37.6, 1.38.4, 1.39.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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