CVE-2021-32677

FastAPI is a web framework for building APIs with Python 3.6+ based on standard Python type hints. FastAPI versions lower than 0.65.2 that used cookies for authentication in path operations that received JSON payloads sent by browsers were vulnerable to a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attack. In versions lower than 0.65.2, FastAPI would try to read the request payload as JSON even if the content-type header sent was not set to application/json or a compatible JSON media type (e.g. application/geo+json). A request with a content type of text/plain containing JSON data would be accepted and the JSON data would be extracted. Requests with content type text/plain are exempt from CORS preflights, for being considered Simple requests. The browser will execute them right away including cookies, and the text content could be a JSON string that would be parsed and accepted by the FastAPI application. This is fixed in FastAPI 0.65.2. The request data is now parsed as JSON only if the content-type header is application/json or another JSON compatible media type like application/geo+json. Its best to upgrade to the latest FastAPI, but if updating is not possible then a middleware or a dependency that checks the content-type header and aborts the request if it is not application/json or another JSON compatible content type can act as a mitigating workaround.

Weakness

The web application does not, or can not, sufficiently verify whether a well-formed, valid, consistent request was intentionally provided by the user who submitted the request.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
• For example, use anti-CSRF packages such as the OWASP CSRFGuard. [REF-330]
• Another example is the ESAPI Session Management control, which includes a component for CSRF. [REF-45]
• Use the “double-submitted cookie” method as described by Felten and Zeller:
• When a user visits a site, the site should generate a pseudorandom value and set it as a cookie on the user’s machine. The site should require every form submission to include this value as a form value and also as a cookie value. When a POST request is sent to the site, the request should only be considered valid if the form value and the cookie value are the same.
• Because of the same-origin policy, an attacker cannot read or modify the value stored in the cookie. To successfully submit a form on behalf of the user, the attacker would have to correctly guess the pseudorandom value. If the pseudorandom value is cryptographically strong, this will be prohibitively difficult.
• This technique requires Javascript, so it may not work for browsers that have Javascript disabled. [REF-331]

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/111.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/462.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/467.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/62.html

References

• https://github.com/tiangolo/fastapi/commit/fa7e3c996edf2d5482fff8f9d890ac2390dede4d
• https://github.com/tiangolo/fastapi/security/advisories/GHSA-8h2j-cgx8-6xv7
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/MATAWX25TYKNEKLDMKWNLYDB34UWTROA/