Squid is an open source caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. Due to a Collapse of Data into Unsafe Value bug ,Squid may be vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack against HTTP header parsing. This problem allows a remote client or a remote server to perform Denial of Service when sending oversized headers in HTTP messages. In versions of Squid prior to 6.5 this can be achieved if the request_header_max_size or reply_header_max_size settings are unchanged from the default. In Squid version 6.5 and later, the default setting of these parameters is safe. Squid will emit a critical warning in cache.log if the administrator is setting these parameters to unsafe values. Squid will not at this time prevent these settings from being changed to unsafe values. Users are advised to upgrade to version 6.5. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability. This issue is also tracked as SQUID-2024:2
Weakness
The product filters data in a way that causes it to be reduced or “collapsed” into an unsafe value that violates an expected security property.
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. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does.
- 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.
References