Improper Validation of Syntactic Correctness of Input vulnerability in mtrudel bandit allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to set conn.host and conn.port to values outside the RFC 3986 host grammar via the authority of an HTTP/1 absolute-form or authority-form request target. Bandit validates the Host header and answers 400 when it is malformed, but when the request target carries its own authority that authority takes precedence, as RFC 9112 requires, and Bandit.Pipeline.determine_host_and_port!/4 in lib/bandit/pipeline.ex passes it to the application unchecked. A request line such as GET http://good.example@evil.example/x HTTP/1.1 with a valid Host header yields a conn.host of good.example@evil.example, and the same path admits NUL, DEL and non-ASCII bytes, invalid IP literals and ports outside 1..65535. The HTTP/1.0 clause needs no Host header at all, and CONNECT places the unparsed port string in conn.port.
Applications that build absolute URLs from conn.host, such as through Plug.Conn.request_url/1 or Phoenix URL helpers, emit links whose authority the attacker chose. Message framing is unaffected, and no CR or LF can reach conn.host.
This issue affects bandit: from 0.6.0 before 1.13.0.
Weakness
The product receives input that is expected to be well-formed - i.e., to comply with a certain syntax - but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input complies with the syntax.
Extended Description
Often, complex inputs are expected to follow a particular syntax, which is either assumed by the input itself, or declared within metadata such as headers. The syntax could be for data exchange formats, markup languages, or even programming languages. When untrusted input is not properly validated for the expected syntax, attackers could cause parsing failures, trigger unexpected errors, or expose latent vulnerabilities that might not be directly exploitable if the input had conformed to the syntax.
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.
Related Attack Patterns
References
- https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-105660.html
- https://github.com/mtrudel/bandit/commit/0e3edda0edf6322e9164b827c6d3ddecd080ff2e
- https://github.com/mtrudel/bandit/commit/6ea80210137b3f69caf65f67398934259dc365d0
- https://github.com/mtrudel/bandit/security/advisories/GHSA-v53v-9hvg-37jf
- https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-105660
- https://github.com/mtrudel/bandit/security/advisories/GHSA-v53v-9hvg-37jf