In scrapy/scrapy, an issue was identified where the Authorization header is not removed during redirects that only change the scheme (e.g., HTTPS to HTTP) but remain within the same domain. This behavior contravenes the Fetch standard, which mandates the removal of Authorization headers in cross-origin requests when the scheme, host, or port changes. Consequently, when a redirect downgrades from HTTPS to HTTP, the Authorization header may be inadvertently exposed in plaintext, leading to potential sensitive information disclosure to unauthorized actors. The flaw is located in the _build_redirect_request function of the redirect middleware.
The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Python-scrapy | Ubuntu | mantic | * |
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.