CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2015-5739

Inconsistent Interpretation of HTTP Requests ('HTTP Request/Response Smuggling')

Published: Oct 18, 2017 | Modified: May 10, 2019
CVSS 3.x
9.8
CRITICAL
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
7.5 HIGH
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V2
6.8 MODERATE
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu
LOW

The net/http library in net/textproto/reader.go in Go before 1.4.3 does not properly parse HTTP header keys, which allows remote attackers to conduct HTTP request smuggling attacks via a space instead of a hyphen, as demonstrated by Content Length instead of Content-Length.

Weakness

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.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Go Golang * 1.4.2 (including)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 RedHat golang-0:1.6.3-1.el7_2.1 *
Gcc-5 Ubuntu artful *
Gcc-5 Ubuntu bionic *
Gcc-5 Ubuntu cosmic *
Gcc-5 Ubuntu wily *
Gcc-5 Ubuntu xenial *
Gcc-5 Ubuntu yakkety *
Gcc-5 Ubuntu zesty *
Gccgo-4.7 Ubuntu precise *
Gccgo-4.9 Ubuntu trusty *
Gccgo-4.9 Ubuntu trusty/esm *
Gccgo-5 Ubuntu vivid *
Gccgo-5 Ubuntu vivid/stable-phone-overlay *
Gccgo-5 Ubuntu vivid/ubuntu-core *
Golang Ubuntu precise *
Golang Ubuntu trusty *
Golang Ubuntu upstream *
Golang Ubuntu vivid *
Golang Ubuntu vivid/stable-phone-overlay *
Golang Ubuntu vivid/ubuntu-core *

Extended Description

HTTP requests or responses (“messages”) can be malformed or unexpected in ways that cause web servers or clients to interpret the messages in different ways than intermediary HTTP agents such as load balancers, reverse proxies, web caching proxies, application firewalls, etc. For example, an adversary may be able to add duplicate or different header fields that a client or server might interpret as one set of messages, whereas the intermediary might interpret the same sequence of bytes as a different set of messages. For example, discrepancies can arise in how to handle duplicate headers like two Transfer-encoding (TE) or two Content-length (CL), or the malicious HTTP message will have different headers for TE and CL. The inconsistent parsing and interpretation of messages can allow the adversary to “smuggle” a message to the client/server without the intermediary being aware of it. This weakness is usually the result of the usage of outdated or incompatible HTTP protocol versions in the HTTP agents.

Potential Mitigations

References