Vulnerability details

CVE-2026-40165

goauthentik authentik

authentik: SAML NameID XML Comment Injection Enables Authentication Bypass via Identifier Truncation

CVSS 3.1
8.7High

Official description

authentik is an open-source identity provider. Versions 2025.12.4 and prior, and versions 2026.2.0-rc1 through 2026.2.2 were vulnerable to Authentication Bypass through SAML NameID XML Comment Injection. Due to how authentik extracted the NameID value from a SAML assertion, it was possible for an attacker to trick authentik into only seeing a part of the NameID value, potentially allowing an attacker to gain access to other accounts. This issue could be exploited on an authentik instance with a SAML Source, where the attacker had an account on the SAML Source and the ability to modify their NameID value (commonly username or E-mail), and XML Signing was enabled. The attacker could modify the SAML assertion given to authentik by injecting a comment within the NameID value, which effectively truncated the NameID value to the snippet before the comment, and gave the attacker access to any user account. This issue has been fixed in versions 2025.12.5 and 2026.2.3.

CVSS scores

ScoreVersionSourceVector
8.7High 3.1 CVEProject cvelistV5 (CNA) (GitHub_M) CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N

Affected products

VendorProductVersionsSource
goauthentik authentik < 2025.12.5 CVEProject cvelistV5 (CNA)
goauthentik authentik >= 2026.2.0-rc1, < 2026.2.3 CVEProject cvelistV5 (CNA)

References and advisories

3
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Details

Published
2026-05-21
Last updated
2026-05-21
State
Published
Assigner (CNA)
GitHub_M

Exploit prediction (EPSS)

0.5%
Probability of exploitation in 30 days
43.2%
Percentile (among all CVEs)

SSVC assessment (CISA)

Automatable
No
Exploitation
None
Technical impact
Total

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-287
    Improper Authentication
  • CWE-91
    XML Injection (aka Blind XPath Injection)
  • CWE-436
    Interpretation Conflict