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 authentication bypass due to cache key confusion. The `oauth2_introspection` authenticator cache does not distinguish tokens that were validated with different introspection URLs. An attacker can therefore legitimately use a token to prime the cache, and subsequently use the same token for rules that use a different introspection server. Ory Oathkeeper has to be configured with multiple `oauth2_introspection` authenticator servers, each accepting different tokens. The authenticators also must be configured to use caching. An attacker has to have a way to gain a valid token for one of the configured introspection servers. Starting in version 26.2.0, Ory Oathkeeper includes the introspection server URL in the cache key, preventing confusion of tokens. Update to the patched version of Ory Oathkeeper. If that is not immediately possible, disable caching for `oauth2_introspection` authenticators.
ORY Oathkeeper is an Identity & Access Proxy (IAP) and Access Control Decision API that authorizes HTTP requests based on sets of Access Rules. Ory Oathkeeper is often deployed behind other components like CDNs, WAFs, or reverse proxies. Depending on the setup, another component might forward the request to the Oathkeeper proxy with a different protocol (http vs.https) than the original request. In order to properly match the request against the configured rules, Oathkeeper considers the `X-Forwarded-Proto` header when evaluating rules. The configuration option `serve.proxy.trust_forwarded_headers` (defaults to false) governs whether this and other `X-Forwarded-*` headers should be trusted. Prior to version 26.2.0, Oathkeeper did not properly respect this configuration, and would always consider the `X-Forwarded-Proto` header. In order for an attacker to abuse this, an installation of Ory Oathkeeper needs to have distinct rules for HTTP and HTTPS requests. Also, the attacker needs to be able to trigger one but not the other rule. In this scenario, the attacker can send the same request but with the `X-Forwarded-Proto` header in order to trigger the other rule. We do not expect many configurations to meet these preconditions. Version 26.2.0 contains a patch. Ory Oathkeeper will correctly respect the `serve.proxy.trust_forwarded_headers` configuration going forward, thereby eliminating the attack scenario. We recommend upgrading to a fixed version even if the preconditions are not met. As an additional mitigation, it is generally recommended to drop any unexpected headers as early as possible when a request is handled, e.g.in the WAF.
ORY Oathkeeper versions prior to 26.2.0 are affected by a critical authorization bypass vulnerability due to relative path traversal (CWE-23). The issue arises because the software uses the raw, un-normalized HTTP request path for access rule evaluation, allowing crafted URLs with path traversal sequences to bypass intended access controls. This vulnerability has a CVSS score of 10.0, indicating critical severity. Version 26.2.0 includes a patch that addresses this flaw.