CVE-2026-77463
Remark42: Rate limit bypass via unconditional trust of X-Forwarded-For/X-Real-IP headers in direct-internet deployment
What happened?
Remark42 is a self-hosted comment engine for blogs, articles, or any other place where readers can add comments. From 1.0.0 until 1.16.2, Remark42 globally trusts True-Client-IP, X-Real-IP, and X-Forwarded-For without verifying that the direct peer is a trusted proxy, and middleware.RealIP overwrites r.RemoteAddr before per-IP controls run. In a directly reachable deployment, or a proxy that forwards attacker-controlled headers, a remote attacker can rotate spoofed forwarding headers to obtain fresh token buckets for rate-limited endpoints, bypass vote de-duplication when --votes-ip is enabled, mint anonymous identities, and poison stored comment IPs and request logs. The global concurrent-request throttle and per-request timeouts still limit availability impact. Mitigation support is available in version 1.16.2, but operators must configure --trusted-proxy for the deployment topology.
Affected software and versions
| Software | Version information | Fixed version |
|---|---|---|
| remark42umputun | affected: >= 1.0.0, < 1.16.2 | See vendor advisory |
Version information comes from the source record and can include unaffected products and exceptions. Distribution packages may contain backported fixes: an older upstream version alone does not prove a server is affected.
Is it being exploited?
This CVE was not listed in the CISA catalogue at our last retrieval. This does not establish that exploitation is absent.
How to respond
- Confirm the product, installed package version, and any configuration requirements in the vendor advisory.
- Follow the vendor’s remediation or workaround guidance in the references below. Structured fixed-version data is unavailable here; the publisher’s description may include a fix or workaround.
- Restart affected services if required, then verify the running version. Known exploitation may warrant investigation as well as patching.
Sources and remediation references
- https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-77463
- https://github.com/umputun/remark42/security/advisories/GHSA-56x6-q882-mf27
- https://github.com/umputun/remark42/pull/2116
- https://github.com/umputun/remark42/pull/2118
- https://github.com/umputun/remark42/commit/b1502801facd7782a1c70fd51f8ad5c2eb650d39
- https://github.com/umputun/remark42/commit/e62b3c830d81659cf5d2687b0c8261da7d42fdab
- https://github.com/umputun/remark42/releases/tag/backend/v1.16.2
- https://remark42.com/docs/configuration/parameters/#trusted-proxies-and-client-ip