CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-4143

URL Redirection to Untrusted Site ('Open Redirect')

Published: May 01, 2025 | Modified: May 01, 2025
CVSS 3.x
N/A
Source:
NVD
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

The OAuth implementation in workers-oauth-provider that is part of MCP framework https://github.com/cloudflare/workers-mcp , did not correctly validate that redirect_uri was on the allowed list of redirect URIs for the given client registration.

Fixed in:  https://github.com/cloudflare/workers-oauth-provider/pull/26 https://github.com/cloudflare/workers-oauth-provider/pull/26

Impact:

Under certain circumstances (see below), if a victim had previously authorized with a server built on workers-oath-provider, and an attacker could later trick the victim into visiting a malicious web site, then attacker could potentially steal the victims credentials to the same OAuth server and subsequently impersonate them.

In order for the attack to be possible, the OAuth servers authorized callback must be designed to auto-approve authorizations that appear to come from an OAuth client that the victim has authorized previously. The authorization flow is not implemented by workers-oauth-provider; it is up to the application built on top to decide whether to implement such automatic re-authorization. However, many applications do implement such logic.

Note: It is a basic, well-known requirement that OAuth servers should verify that the redirect URI is among the allowed list for the client, both during the authorization flow and subsequently when exchanging the authorization code for an access token. workers-oauth-provider implemented only the latter check, not the former. Unfortunately, the former is the much more important check. Readers who are familiar with OAuth may recognize that failing to check redirect URIs against the allowed list is a well-known, basic mistake, covered extensively in the RFC and elsewhere. The author of this library would like everyone to know that he was, in fact, well-aware of this requirement, thought about it a lot while designing the library, and then, somehow, forgot to actually make sure the check was in the code. That is, its not that he didnt know what he was doing, its that he knew what he was doing but flubbed it.

Weakness

A web application accepts a user-controlled input that specifies a link to an external site, and uses that link in a Redirect. This simplifies phishing attacks.

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.
  • Use a list of approved URLs or domains to be used for redirection.
  • When the set of acceptable objects, such as filenames or URLs, is limited or known, create a mapping from a set of fixed input values (such as numeric IDs) to the actual filenames or URLs, and reject all other inputs.
  • For example, ID 1 could map to “/login.asp” and ID 2 could map to “http://www.example.com/". Features such as the ESAPI AccessReferenceMap [REF-45] provide this capability.
  • Understand all the potential areas where untrusted inputs can enter your software: parameters or arguments, cookies, anything read from the network, environment variables, reverse DNS lookups, query results, request headers, URL components, e-mail, files, filenames, databases, and any external systems that provide data to the application. Remember that such inputs may be obtained indirectly through API calls.
  • Many open redirect problems occur because the programmer assumed that certain inputs could not be modified, such as cookies and hidden form fields.

References