Nettys HTTP/3 codec (io.netty:netty-codec-http3) in versions 4.2.0.Final through 4.2.17.Final does not enforce the RFC 9114 requirement that the :authority pseudo-header field and a literal host header field, when both present, carry the same value. A remote unauthenticated peer can send a single HEADERS frame containing both fields with differing, attacker-controlled values; the request is accepted and delivered to the application with two conflicting authorities, allowing routing, virtual-host, and access-control decisions to be bypassed when different components in the request path consult different fields. This issue is fixed in 4.2.18.Final.
Weakness
The product acts as an intermediary HTTP agent (such as a proxy or firewall) in the data flow between two entities such as a client and server, but it does not interpret malformed HTTP requests or responses in ways that are consistent with how the messages will be processed by those entities that are at the ultimate destination.
Extended Description
HTTP requests or responses (“messages”) can be malformed or unexpected in ways that cause web servers or clients to interpret the messages in different ways than intermediary HTTP agents such as load balancers, reverse proxies, web caching proxies, application firewalls, etc. For example, an adversary may be able to add duplicate or different header fields that a client or server might interpret as one set of messages, whereas the intermediary might interpret the same sequence of bytes as a different set of messages. For example, discrepancies can arise in how to handle duplicate headers like two Transfer-encoding (TE) or two Content-length (CL), or the malicious HTTP message will have different headers for TE and CL. The inconsistent parsing and interpretation of messages can allow the adversary to “smuggle” a message to the client/server without the intermediary being aware of it. This weakness is usually the result of the usage of outdated or incompatible HTTP protocol versions in the HTTP agents.