CVE-2026-33223
Published: 25 March 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-33223 is a medium-severity Authentication Bypass by Spoofing (CWE-290) vulnerability in Linuxfoundation Nats-Server. Its CVSS base score is 6.4 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 11.3th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-15996
Vulnerability details
NATS-Server is a High-Performance server for NATS.io, a cloud and edge native messaging system. Prior to versions 2.11.15 and 2.12.6, the NATS message header `Nats-Request-Info:` is supposed to be a guarantee of identity by the NATS server, but the stripping…
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of this header from inbound messages was not fully effective. An attacker with valid credentials for any regular client interface could thus spoof their identity to services which rely upon this header. Versions 2.11.15 and 2.12.6 contain a fix. No known workarounds are available.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Auth bypass via unsanitized header enables public app exploitation and identity spoofing/impersonation to trusted services.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Reveals spoofed logon attempts through unexpected previous logon timestamps upon legitimate login.
Training specifically addresses recognizing spoofed communications and phishing that enable authentication bypass.
Requiring verifiable identity evidence at appropriate assurance levels makes it substantially harder for attackers to successfully spoof or impersonate users to obtain accounts.
Unique device authentication makes successful spoofing of device identity substantially more difficult to achieve.
Unique identification of non-organizational users reduces the feasibility of authentication bypass by spoofing.
Unique identification and authentication of services before communications makes spoofing of service identities substantially harder.
Isolated trusted path ensures the user interacts only with genuine system components, preventing spoofing of authentication interfaces or prompts.
Directly counters DNS response spoofing by requiring cryptographic origin authentication artifacts from the authoritative source.