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Authorization Policy Bypass Due to Case Insensitive Host Comparison

High
brian-avery published GHSA-7774-7vr3-cc8j Aug 24, 2021

Package

gomod istio.io/istio (Go)

Affected versions

<= 1.9.8

Patched versions

1.9.8, 1.10.4, 1.11.1

Description

Impact

According to RFC 4343, Istio authorization policy should compare the hostname in the HTTP Host header in a case insensitive way, but currently the comparison is case sensitive. The Envoy proxy will route the request hostname in a case-insensitive way which means the authorization policy could be bypassed.

As an example, the user may have an authorization policy that rejects request with hostname "httpbin.foo" for some source IPs, but the attacker can bypass this by sending the request with hostname "Httpbin.Foo".

Patches

  • Istio 1.11.1 and above
  • Istio 1.10.4 and above
  • Istio 1.9.8 and above

Workarounds

A Lua filter may be written to normalize Host header before the authorization check. This is similar to the Path normalization presented in the Security Best Practices guide.

References

More details can be found in the Istio Security Bulletin

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, please email us at istio-security-vulnerability-reports@googlegroups.com

Severity

High
8.3
/ 10

CVSS base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
Required
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
Low
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:L

CVE ID

CVE-2021-39155

Weaknesses

No CWEs

Credits