CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-45803

Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

Published: Oct 17, 2023 | Modified: Nov 03, 2023
CVSS 3.x
4.2
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

urllib3 is a user-friendly HTTP client library for Python. urllib3 previously wouldnt remove the HTTP request body when an HTTP redirect response using status 301, 302, or 303 after the request had its method changed from one that could accept a request body (like POST) to GET as is required by HTTP RFCs. Although this behavior is not specified in the section for redirects, it can be inferred by piecing together information from different sections and we have observed the behavior in other major HTTP client implementations like curl and web browsers. Because the vulnerability requires a previously trusted service to become compromised in order to have an impact on confidentiality we believe the exploitability of this vulnerability is low. Additionally, many users arent putting sensitive data in HTTP request bodies, if this is the case then this vulnerability isnt exploitable. Both of the following conditions must be true to be affected by this vulnerability: 1. Using urllib3 and submitting sensitive information in the HTTP request body (such as form data or JSON) and 2. The origin service is compromised and starts redirecting using 301, 302, or 303 to a malicious peer or the redirected-to service becomes compromised. This issue has been addressed in versions 1.26.18 and 2.0.7 and users are advised to update to resolve this issue. Users unable to update should disable redirects for services that arent expecting to respond with redirects with redirects=False and disable automatic redirects with redirects=False and handle 301, 302, and 303 redirects manually by stripping the HTTP request body.

Weakness

The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Urllib3 Python * 1.26.18 (excluding)
Urllib3 Python 2.0.0 (including) 2.0.7 (excluding)

Extended Description

There are many different kinds of mistakes that introduce information exposures. The severity of the error can range widely, depending on the context in which the product operates, the type of sensitive information that is revealed, and the benefits it may provide to an attacker. Some kinds of sensitive information include:

Information might be sensitive to different parties, each of which may have their own expectations for whether the information should be protected. These parties include:

Information exposures can occur in different ways:

It is common practice to describe any loss of confidentiality as an “information exposure,” but this can lead to overuse of CWE-200 in CWE mapping. From the CWE perspective, loss of confidentiality is a technical impact that can arise from dozens of different weaknesses, such as insecure file permissions or out-of-bounds read. CWE-200 and its lower-level descendants are intended to cover the mistakes that occur in behaviors that explicitly manage, store, transfer, or cleanse sensitive information.

Potential Mitigations

  • Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
  • Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

References