continuwuity is a Matrix homeserver written in Rust. This vulnerability allows an attacker with a malicious remote server to cause the local server to sign an arbitrary event upon user interaction. Upon a user account leaving a room (rejecting an invite), joining a room or knocking on a room, the victim server may ask a remote server for assistance. If the victim asks the attacker server for assistance the attacker is able to provide an arbitrary event, which the victim will sign and return to the attacker. For the /leave endpoint, this works for any event with a supported room version, where the origin and origin_server_ts is set by the victim. For the /join endpoint, an additionally victim-set content field in the format of a join membership is needed. For the /knock endpoint, an additional victim-set content field in the format of a knock membership and a room version not between 1 and 6 is needed. This was exploited as a part of a larger chain against the continuwuity.org homeserver. This vulnerability affects all Conduit-derived servers. This vulnerability is fixed in Continuwuity 0.5.1, Conduit 0.10.11, Grapevine 0aae932b, and Tuwunel 1.4.9.
Weakness
The product receives a request, message, or directive from an upstream component, but the product does not sufficiently preserve the original source of the request before forwarding the request to an external actor that is outside of the product’s control sphere. This causes the product to appear to be the source of the request, leading it to act as a proxy or other intermediary between the upstream component and the external actor.
Extended Description
If an attacker cannot directly contact a target, but the product has access to the target, then the attacker can send a request to the product and have it be forwarded to the target. The request would appear to be coming from the product’s system, not the attacker’s system. As a result, the attacker can bypass access controls (such as firewalls) or hide the source of malicious requests, since the requests would not be coming directly from the attacker. Since proxy functionality and message-forwarding often serve a legitimate purpose, this issue only becomes a vulnerability when: