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Medium

NGINX HTTP/3 QUIC source IP spoofing

IdentifiersCVE-2026-40460CWE-290· Authentication Bypass by Spoofing

CVE-2026-40460 is an address spoofing vulnerability in NGINX Open Source and NGINX Plus when configured to use the HTTP/3 QUIC module (ngx_quic_module). Under this configuration, an attacker may be able to spoof the apparent client source IP address during HTTP/3 processing. The issue affects deployments using HTTP/3/QUIC and can undermine security controls that rely on the client IP as a trust signal. Publicly available context indicates the flaw was fixed in nginx 1.30.1 stable and 1.31.0 mainline.

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation allows an attacker to appear to originate from a different IP address than their real source. This can bypass IP-based authorization controls and evade or defeat rate-limiting mechanisms that key on client source address. Depending on deployment, this may also reduce the effectiveness of logging, abuse prevention, geofencing, reputation-based filtering, and other policy decisions derived from client IP identity.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

If immediate patching is not possible, disable HTTP/3/QUIC support and serve traffic over HTTP/1.1 and/or HTTP/2 only until the fix can be deployed. Avoid relying solely on client source IP for authorization or rate limiting on affected HTTP/3 listeners; where feasible, add compensating controls such as authentication-based access decisions, upstream filtering, or rate limiting keyed on stronger identifiers. Review logs and monitoring for anomalous HTTP/3 activity from apparently trusted or rate-limited addresses.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade NGINX to a fixed release. The provided context indicates fixes are included in nginx 1.30.1 (stable) and 1.31.0 (mainline). For NGINX Plus, apply the vendor-provided update containing the fix for CVE-2026-40460. Software versions that have reached End of Technical Support are noted as not evaluated, so supported fixed builds should be used.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.

VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
F5Nginxapplication
F5Nginx Plusapplication
NginxNgx Quic Moduleapplication

Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.

What this page doesn’t show

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Exposure mapping

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Threat actor evidence

Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.

Associated malware

Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.

Detection signatures

YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.

Vendor-by-vendor mapping

Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.

Social activity3

Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.