CVE-2026-2833: cloudflare https://github.com/cloudflare/pingora HTTP Request/Response Smuggling

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-2833 is a critical (CVSS 9.3) HTTP Request/Response Smuggling vulnerability in cloudflare https://github.com/cloudflare/pingora. EPSS estimates a 0.52% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 43.1% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 04-03-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 06-03-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

An HTTP request smuggling vulnerability (CWE-444) was found in Pingora's handling of HTTP/1.1 connection upgrades. The issue occurs when a Pingora proxy reads a request containing an Upgrade header, causing the proxy to pass through the rest of the bytes on the connection to a backend before the backend has accepted the upgrade. An attacker can thus directly forward a malicious payload after a request with an Upgrade header to that backend in a way that may be interpreted as a subsequent request header, bypassing proxy-level security controls and enabling cross-user session hijacking. Impact This vulnerability primarily affects standalone Pingora deployments where a Pingora proxy is exposed to external traffic. An attacker could exploit this to: * Bypass proxy-level ACL controls and WAF logic * Poison caches and upstream connections, causing subsequent requests from legitimate users to receive responses intended for smuggled requests * Perform cross-user attacks by hijacking sessions or smuggling requests that appear to originate from the trusted proxy IP Cloudflare's CDN infrastructure was not affected by this vulnerability, as ingress proxies in the CDN stack maintain proper HTTP parsing boundaries and do not prematurely switch to upgraded connection forwarding mode. Mitigation: Pingora users should upgrade to Pingora v0.8.0 or higher As a workaround, users may return an error on requests with the Upgrade header present in their request filter logic in order to stop processing bytes beyond the request header and disable downstream connection reuse.

• CWE-444Inconsistent Interpretation of HTTP Requests ('HTTP Request/Response Smuggling')The product acts as an intermediary HTTP agent (such as a proxy or firewall) in the data flow between two entities such as a client and server, but it does not interpret malformed HTTP requests or responses in ways that are consistent with how the messages will be processed by those entities that are at the ultimate destination.