CVE-2022-3215

NIOHTTP1 and projects using it for generating HTTP responses can be subject to a HTTP Response Injection attack. This occurs when a HTTP/1.1 server accepts user generated input from an incoming request and reflects it into a HTTP/1.1 response header in some form. A malicious user can add newlines to their input (usually in encoded form) and inject those newlines into the returned HTTP response. This capability allows users to work around security headers and HTTP/1.1 framing headers by injecting entirely false responses or other new headers. The injected false responses may also be treated as the response to subsequent requests, which can lead to XSS, cache poisoning, and a number of other flaws. This issue was resolved by adding validation to the HTTPHeaders type, ensuring that theres no whitespace incorrectly present in the HTTP headers provided by users. As the existing API surface is non-failable, all invalid characters are replaced by linear whitespace.

Weakness

The product receives data from an HTTP agent/component (e.g., web server, proxy, browser, etc.), but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes CR and LF characters before the data is included in outgoing HTTP headers.

Affected Software

Extended Description

     HTTP agents or components may include a web server, load balancer, reverse proxy, web caching proxy, application firewall, web browser, etc. Regardless of the role, they are expected to maintain coherent, consistent HTTP communication state across all components. However, including unexpected data in an HTTP header allows an attacker to specify the entirety of the HTTP message that is rendered by the client HTTP agent (e.g., web browser) or back-end HTTP agent (e.g., web server), whether the message is part of a request or a response.

When an HTTP request contains unexpected CR and LF characters, the server may respond with an output stream that is interpreted as “splitting” the stream into two different HTTP messages instead of one. CR is carriage return, also given by %0d or \r, and LF is line feed, also given by %0a or \n. In addition to CR and LF characters, other valid/RFC compliant special characters and unique character encodings can be utilized, such as HT (horizontal tab, also given by %09 or \t) and SP (space, also given as + sign or %20). These types of unvalidated and unexpected data in HTTP message headers allow an attacker to control the second “split” message to mount attacks such as server-side request forgery, cross-site scripting, and cache poisoning attacks. HTTP response splitting weaknesses may be present when:

Potential Mitigations

• Assume all input is malicious. Use an “accept known good” input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. If an input does not strictly conform to specifications, reject it or transform it into something that conforms.
• When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, “boat” may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as “red” or “blue.”
• Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code’s environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/105.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/31.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/34.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/85.html

References

• https://github.com/apple/swift-nio/security/advisories/GHSA-7fj7-39wj-c64f
• https://github.com/apple/swift-nio/security/advisories/GHSA-7fj7-39wj-c64f