CVE-2026-91184
Raw vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:XCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2026-91184 is a high-severity Improper Neutralization of Equivalent Special Elements (CWE-76) vulnerability. Its CVSS base score is 8.7 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Protocol or Service Impersonation (T1001.003); ranked at the 40th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-8 (Security and Privacy Engineering Principles) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-101116
Vulnerability Data
Description NGINX Gateway Fabric has a vulnerability when it renders the spec.basic.realm (and spec.jwt.realm) field of a namespaced AuthenticationFilter verbatim, unescaped and unvalidated, into the shared data-plane nginx.conf as auth_basic "<realm>";. A namespaced authenticated attacker that configures AuthenticationFilter CRD to…
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an HTTPRoute/GRPCRoute on a shared Gateway can craft a realm value that closes the quoted directive and the enclosing location {} block and injects arbitrary NGINX directives into that Gateway's data-plane config. Impact A remote authenticated attacker can send crafted requests to configure NGINX Gateway Fabric AuthenticationFilter CRD and may be able to read every co-located tenant's mounted secrets, SSRF via proxy_pass, reading the pod ServiceAccount token, or hijacking other tenants' routes. There is no data plane exposure; this is a control plane issue only. Note: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
SA-11 requires developer testing and evaluation that can discover failures to neutralize equivalent special elements.
SA-8 mandates security engineering principles such as complete input validation and sanitization that cover equivalent special-element forms.
SI-10 requires validation of information inputs, directly stopping incomplete neutralization of equivalent special elements.
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.
Secure SDLC practices directly require consistent neutralization of all equivalent special elements during input validation and sanitization.
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.
A.8.25 mandates secure SDLC practices (secure coding guidelines, security requirements, checkpoints, testing, developer training) that reach improper neutralization of equivalent special elements, but only as one slice of a broad requirement whose implementation scope and rigour are left to the organisation.
Application security requirements include rules for handling special characters and equivalent encodings.
A.8.27 mandates security-by-design principles (defense-in-depth, least privilege, distrust external input, fail securely, hardening, design review against attack patterns) that reach some but not most cases of equivalent-special-element neutralization failures.
Secure coding standards directly address proper neutralization of all equivalent special elements.
Security testing can detect incomplete neutralization but does not prevent the weakness itself.