Authentication bypass in Symfony X.509 authenticator via DN spoofing
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Attack requirements
- Present
- Impact type
- Security bypass
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- High · High · High
- Fix status
- Fixed
Attack profile from CVSS 4.0 · CNA. Fix status from CNA. Impact type from CWE-290.
Summary
Symfony versions before 5.4.56, from 6.0.0 before 6.4.50, from 7.0.0 before 7.4.23, and from 8.0.0 before 8.1.11 are affected. The X.509 authenticator splits the certificate Subject DN with a regular expression that does not respect escaped separators, so a value containing a separator can be read as a different attribute (CWE-290). An attacker holding a certificate from the application's trusted CA who can influence the CN can authenticate as any user, including a privileged one. This is an incomplete fix for an earlier flaw in the same code.
Written with Claude Haiku 5.5 from the sources below · 2026-11-04
Description from the CNA
Authentication bypass by spoofing in X509Authenticator and X509AuthenticationListener of Symfony versions prior to 5.4.56, 6.x prior to 6.4.50, 7.x prior to 7.4.23, and 8.x prior to 8.1.11 allows an attacker holding a certificate from the application's trusted CA who can influence the CN to authenticate as an arbitrary user of the application, including a privileged one, following an incomplete fix for CVE-2026-45063. X509Authenticator extracts the user identifier from the Subject DN (Distinguished Name) that the web server passes in $_SERVER['SSL_CLIENT_S_DN']. The fix for CVE-2026-45063 anchored that extraction to an RDN (Relative Distinguished Name) boundary, but the regular expression used was not escape-aware. The expression runs against an already serialized DN, so it cannot tell an RDN separator from a separator character that occurs inside a value. Under RFC 2253, used by Apache and by nginx's $ssl_client_s_dn, a comma inside a value is escaped as \, and the expression reads it as a separator regardless. RFC 2253 also does not treat / as a separator, so it leaves it bare inside a value, while the expression treats every / as one. The legacy X509_NAME_oneline() format, used by Apache's LegacyDNStringFormat and by nginx's $ssl_client_s_dn_legacy, is the mirror image: it escapes / as \/ and leaves , bare. In that format, a certificate with no emailAddress attribute, or whose poisoned CN precedes it, authenticates as the smuggled address. To cover both RFC 2253 and the legacy X509_NAME_oneline() format, X509Authenticator and X509AuthenticationListener now split the DN into RDNs before looking for the attribute, instead of matching the attribute against the serialized string. They select the separator from the serialization, split on unescaped occurrences of that separator only, unescape each RDN afterwards with the rules of its format, and require the attribute to span a whole RDN. The accepted value grammar is unchanged. Applications that pass a per-attribute user key (such as SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_Email) and deployments whose CA generates or validates the subject are not affected by this vulnerability.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- None
- Automatable
- No
- Technical impact
- Total
The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.
Affected products
No affected products listed by the sources yet.
Remediation
Upgrade Symfony to 5.4.56, 6.4.50, 7.4.23 or 8.1.11, matching the release line in use.
Written with Claude Haiku 5.5 from the sources below · 2026-11-04
Fixed in the same release
Records fixed by the same vendor advisory or release, as the CNA lists them.
- Release ·
sensiolabs symfony 5.4.56, 6.4.50 and 2 more versions
3 records Highest priority Priority LOW 3 LOW
Other records, highest priority first
- TI-2026-85117 Symfony HttpClient sends default scope credentials to other originsPriority LOW 35
- TI-2026-85043 Symfony host placeholders bypass path-based access controlPriority LOW 28
Timeline
- 2026-11-04 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-118513
- 2026-11-04 Affected versions changed · CNA
- 2026-11-05 CISA SSVC decision points changed
- 2026-11-05 Priority changed: MEDIUM → LOW
References
More sensiolabs vulnerabilities
- TI-2019-13616 An issue was discovered in Symfony 3.4.0 through 3.4.34, 4.2.0 through 4.2.11, and 4.3.0… CVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8
- TI-2018-10604 An issue was discovered in Http Foundation in Symfony 2.7.0 through 2.7.48, 2.8.0 through… CVSS 3.1MEDIUM 6.5
- TI-2019-08131 In Symfony before 2.7.51, 2.8.x before 2.8.50, 3.x before 3.4.26, 4.x before 4.1.12, and… CVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8
- TI-2016-02159 Symfony before 2.8.6 and 3.x before 3.0.6 allows remote attackers to bypass… CVSS 3.0CRITICAL 9.8
- TI-2019-08459 An issue was discovered in Symfony before 4.2.12 and 4.3.x before 4.3.8. CVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8
- TI-2018-08136 An issue was discovered in the Ldap component in Symfony 2.8.x before 2.8.37, 3.3.x… CVSS 3.0CRITICAL 9.8
Sources
This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. Sources and licences