Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HSummary
CVE-2026-25949 is a high-severity Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400) vulnerability in Traefik Traefik. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Network Denial of Service (T1498); ranked in the top 50% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-10 (Concurrent Session Control) and SC-5 (Denial-of-service Protection) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary
Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.
CVE-2026-25949 is a denial-of-service vulnerability in Traefik, an open-source HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer, affecting versions prior to 3.6.8. The issue stems from improper handling of STARTTLS requests, specifically the 8-byte Postgres SSLRequest prelude. By sending this prelude and then stalling, an attacker can bypass the entrypoint's respondingTimeouts.readTimeout configuration, causing connections to remain open indefinitely and potentially exhausting server resources. The vulnerability is rated with a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H) and is associated with CWE-400 (Uncontrolled Resource Consumption).
Any unauthenticated attacker with network access to a vulnerable Traefik instance can exploit this flaw remotely with low complexity and no user interaction required. Exploitation involves initiating a TCP connection to the Traefik entrypoint, transmitting the Postgres SSLRequest bytes, and then pausing further communication, which prevents the timeout from triggering. Successful attacks can lead to resource exhaustion through accumulation of stalled connections, resulting in denial of service for legitimate traffic.
Traefik addressed this vulnerability in version 3.6.8, as detailed in the project's security advisory (GHSA-89p3-4642-cr2w), release notes, and the fixing commit (31e566e9f1d7888ccb6fbc18bfed427203c35678). Security practitioners should upgrade to Traefik 3.6.8 or later to mitigate the issue, and review entrypoint timeout configurations for additional protection against similar resource exhaustion vectors.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-6207
Vulnerability Data
Traefik is an HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer. Prior to 3.6.8, there is a potential vulnerability in Traefik managing STARTTLS requests. An unauthenticated client can bypass Traefik entrypoint respondingTimeouts.readTimeout by sending the 8-byte Postgres SSLRequest (STARTTLS) prelude and then…
more
stalling, causing connections to remain open indefinitely, leading to a denial of service. This vulnerability is fixed in 3.6.8.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
—
—
- 5 hardening rules · 3 OS baselines
V15.4.4
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly enforces a hard limit on concurrent sessions, structurally preventing unbounded resource allocation.
SC-5 directly limits the effects of resource-exhaustion events that constitute uncontrolled consumption.
SC-6 enforces explicit allocation limits on resources, structurally preventing the weakness from occurring.
Imposes a limit on consecutive invalid attempts, preventing one specific class of unbounded resource consumption.
Process isolation confines resource consumption to separate domains, reducing blast radius without stopping the root flaw.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Explicitly requires monitoring and maintaining resource capacity, directly addressing uncontrolled consumption to preserve availability.
Continuous monitoring of computing resources can detect resource exhaustion but does not itself enforce allocation limits.
Resilience mechanisms such as avoiding single points of failure indirectly reduce impact of resource exhaustion.
Hardened configuration baselines can include resource quotas and limits that constrain consumption.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Resource-utilization monitoring and alerting on bottlenecks or overloads limits the impact of denial-of-service or resource-exhaustion attacks.
By continuously monitoring utilization, stress-testing peak loads, and maintaining documented plans to scale or throttle resources, the control directly limits an attacker’s ability to drive a system into uncontrolled resource exhaustion.
Pre-agreed severity-based prioritization and resource allocation during incident triage reduce the likelihood that an attacker-induced resource exhaustion will overwhelm the organization before corrective action is taken.
Business-continuity plans that include resource-management controls reduce the likelihood that an attacker can trigger uncontrolled resource consumption by forcing the system into a degraded or fallback state.
Defining RTOs and capacity requirements for ICT services during business-impact analysis forces organizations to provision sufficient resources and throttling mechanisms, reducing the likelihood that an attacker can induce denial-of-service through uncontrolled resource consumption.
Early notification of anomalous resource consumption or system malfunctions enables throttling or isolation before availability is lost.
Hardening callouts derived
Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that bear on weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Each rule is shown with the relationship its mapping actually records, against the CWE it was authored against. Derived via CVE→CWE over `controls_xwalks` (authoritative rows only; rows rated `none` are excluded).
Oracle Linux 8 (2 rules)
- V-248552 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
- V-248553 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
Oracle Linux 9 (2 rules)
- V-271710 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
- V-271709 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
RHEL 8 (1 rule)
- V-230244 RHEL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770