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[CVE-2021-23336] urllib.parse.parse_qsl(): Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator #87133

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AdamGold mannequin opened this issue Jan 19, 2021 · 57 comments
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3.7 (EOL) end of life 3.8 (EOL) end of life 3.9 only security fixes 3.10 only security fixes release-blocker stdlib Python modules in the Lib dir type-security A security issue

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@AdamGold
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AdamGold mannequin commented Jan 19, 2021

BPO 42967
Nosy @malemburg, @gpshead, @orsenthil, @ned-deily, @mcepl, @merwok, @encukou, @ambv, @serhiy-storchaka, @pablogsal, @miss-islington, @ret2libc, @erlend-aasland, @Fidget-Spinner, @AdamGold
PRs
  • bpo-42967: Don't treat semicolon as a separator in urllib.parse #24271
  • bpo-42967: only use '&' as a query string separator #24297
  • [3.9] bpo-42967: only use '&' as a query string separator (GH-24297) #24528
  • [3.8] bpo-42967: only use '&' as a query string separator (GH-24297)  #24529
  • [3.7] bpo-42967: only use '&' as a query string separator (GH-24297)  #24531
  • [3.6] bpo-42967: only use '&' as a query string separator (GH-24297)  #24532
  • bpo-42967: Fix urllib.parse docs and make logic clearer #24536
  • bpo-42967: coerce bytes separator to string in urllib.parse_qs(l) #24818
  • [3.9] bpo-42967: coerce bytes separator to string in urllib.parse_qs(l) (GH-24818) #25344
  • [3.8] bpo-42967: coerce bytes separator to string in urllib.parse_qs(l) (GH-24818) #25345
  • Files
  • CVE-2021-23336-only-amp-as-query-sep.patch
  • Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.

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    GitHub fields:

    assignee = 'https://github.com/orsenthil'
    closed_at = <Date 2021-02-15.19:34:55.754>
    created_at = <Date 2021-01-19.15:06:49.941>
    labels = ['type-security', '3.8', '3.9', '3.10', 'release-blocker', '3.7', 'library']
    title = '[CVE-2021-23336] urllib.parse.parse_qsl(): Web cache poisoning - `; ` as a query args separator'
    updated_at = <Date 2021-11-08.16:47:04.726>
    user = 'https://github.com/AdamGold'

    bugs.python.org fields:

    activity = <Date 2021-11-08.16:47:04.726>
    actor = 'vstinner'
    assignee = 'orsenthil'
    closed = True
    closed_date = <Date 2021-02-15.19:34:55.754>
    closer = 'orsenthil'
    components = ['Library (Lib)']
    creation = <Date 2021-01-19.15:06:49.941>
    creator = 'AdamGold'
    dependencies = []
    files = ['49839']
    hgrepos = []
    issue_num = 42967
    keywords = ['patch']
    message_count = 57.0
    messages = ['385266', '385332', '385337', '385341', '385342', '385344', '385346', '385352', '385495', '385496', '385497', '385513', '385527', '385544', '385549', '385565', '385566', '385567', '385582', '385585', '385590', '385865', '386003', '386785', '386787', '386788', '386954', '386957', '386960', '386968', '386980', '387027', '387037', '387039', '387040', '387045', '387049', '387069', '387638', '387712', '387735', '387756', '388368', '388433', '388434', '388440', '388447', '388486', '388574', '390782', '390784', '390790', '391231', '405721', '405723', '405725', '405728']
    nosy_count = 15.0
    nosy_names = ['lemburg', 'gregory.p.smith', 'orsenthil', 'ned.deily', 'mcepl', 'eric.araujo', 'petr.viktorin', 'lukasz.langa', 'serhiy.storchaka', 'pablogsal', 'miss-islington', 'rschiron', 'erlendaasland', 'kj', 'AdamGold']
    pr_nums = ['24271', '24297', '24528', '24529', '24531', '24532', '24536', '24818', '25344', '25345']
    priority = 'release blocker'
    resolution = 'fixed'
    stage = 'resolved'
    status = 'closed'
    superseder = None
    type = 'security'
    url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue42967'
    versions = ['Python 3.6', 'Python 3.7', 'Python 3.8', 'Python 3.9', 'Python 3.10']

    @AdamGold
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    AdamGold mannequin commented Jan 19, 2021

    The urlparse module treats semicolon as a separator (https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/Lib/urllib/parse.py#L739) - whereas most proxies today only take ampersands as separators. Link to a blog post explaining this vulnerability: https://snyk.io/blog/cache-poisoning-in-popular-open-source-packages/

    When the attacker can separate query parameters using a semicolon (;), they can cause a difference in the interpretation of the request between the proxy (running with default configuration) and the server. This can result in malicious requests being cached as completely safe ones, as the proxy would usually not see the semicolon as a separator, and therefore would not include it in a cache key of an unkeyed parameter - such as utm_* parameters, which are usually unkeyed. Let’s take the following example of a malicious request:

    GET /?link=http://google.com&utm_content=1;link='><t>alert(1)</script> HTTP/1.1
    
    Host: somesite.com
    
    Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1		
    
    User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/85.0.4183.83 Safari/537.36
    
    Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,imag e/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8,application/signed-exchange;v=b3;q=0.9 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate			
    
    Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9 Connection: close			
    

    urlparse sees 3 parameters here: link, utm_content and then link again. On the other hand, the proxy considers this full string: 1;link='><t>alert(1)</script> as the value of utm_content, which is why the cache key would only contain somesite.com/?link=http://google.com.

    A possible solution could be to allow developers to specify a separator, like werkzeug does:

    https://github.com/pallets/werkzeug/blob/6784c44673d25c91613c6bf2e614c84465ad135b/src/werkzeug/urls.py#L833

    @AdamGold AdamGold mannequin added topic-C-API 3.7 (EOL) end of life 3.9 only security fixes 3.10 only security fixes 3.8 (EOL) end of life type-security A security issue labels Jan 19, 2021
    @vstinner
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    Oops, I missed this issue. I just marked my bpo-42975 issue as a duplicate of this one.

    My message:

    urllib.parse.parse_qsl() uses "&" *and* ";" as separators:

    >>> urllib.parse.parse_qsl("a=1&b=2&c=3")
    [('a', '1'), ('b', '2'), ('c', '3')]
    >>> urllib.parse.parse_qsl("a=1&b=2;c=3")
    [('a', '1'), ('b', '2'), ('c', '3')]

    But the W3C standards evolved and now suggest against considering semicolon (";") as a separator:

    https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-html5-20141028/forms.html#url-encoded-form-data

    "This form data set encoding is in many ways an aberrant monstrosity, the result of many years of implementation accidents and compromises leading to a set of requirements necessary for interoperability, but in no way representing good design practices. In particular, readers are cautioned to pay close attention to the twisted details involving repeated (and in some cases nested) conversions between character encodings and byte sequences."

    "To decode application/x-www-form-urlencoded payloads (...) Let strings be the result of strictly splitting the string payload on U+0026 AMPERSAND characters (&)."

    Maybe we should even go further in Python 3.10 and only split at "&" by default, but let the caller to opt-in for ";" separator as well.

    @vstinner vstinner changed the title Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator urllib.parse.parse_qsl(): Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator Jan 20, 2021
    @vstinner vstinner changed the title Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator urllib.parse.parse_qsl(): Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator Jan 20, 2021
    @vstinner vstinner changed the title urllib.parse.parse_qsl(): Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator [security] urllib.parse.parse_qsl(): Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator Jan 20, 2021
    @vstinner vstinner changed the title urllib.parse.parse_qsl(): Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator [security] urllib.parse.parse_qsl(): Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator Jan 20, 2021
    @malemburg
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    On 20.01.2021 12:07, STINNER Victor wrote:

    Maybe we should even go further in Python 3.10 and only split at "&" by default, but let the caller to opt-in for ";" separator as well.

    +1.

    Personally, I've never seen URLs encoded with ";" as query parameter
    separator in practice on the server side.

    The use of ";" was recommended in the HTML4 spec, but only in an
    implementation side note:

    https://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/appendix/notes.html#h-B.2.2

    and not in the main reference:

    https://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/interact/forms.html#h-17.13.4.1

    Browsers are also pretty relaxed about seeing non-escaped ampersands in
    link URLs and do the right thing, so the suggested work-around for
    avoiding escaping is not really needed.

    @malemburg malemburg changed the title [security] urllib.parse.parse_qsl(): Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator Jan 20, 2021
    @malemburg malemburg changed the title [security] urllib.parse.parse_qsl(): Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator Jan 20, 2021
    @malemburg malemburg changed the title Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator [security] Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator Jan 20, 2021
    @malemburg malemburg changed the title Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator [security] Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator Jan 20, 2021
    @vstinner vstinner changed the title [security] Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator [security] urllib.parse.parse_qsl(): Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator Jan 20, 2021
    @vstinner vstinner changed the title [security] Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator [security] urllib.parse.parse_qsl(): Web cache poisoning - ; as a query args separator Jan 20, 2021
    @malemburg
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    Sorry for the title mess: It seems that when replying to a ticket, RoundUp uses the subject line as the new header regardless of what it was set to before.

    @vstinner
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    Sorry for the title mess: It seems that when replying to a ticket, RoundUp uses the subject line as the new header regardless of what it was set to before.

    Yeah, it's annoying :-( I like to put a module name in the issue title, to help bug triage.

    @serhiy-storchaka
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    It looks to me, that this is an issue of proxies, not Python. Python implementation obeys contemporary standards, and they are not formally cancelled yet. If we add an option in parse_qsl() or change its default behavior, it should be considered as a new feature which helps to mitigate proxies' issues.

    @vstinner
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    Python implementation obeys contemporary standards

    The contemporary standard is HTML5 and HTML5 asks to only split at "&", no?

    @Fidget-Spinner
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    FWIW, a surprising amount of things rely on treating ';' as a valid separator in the standard test suite.

    From just a cursory look:

    test_cgi
    test_urlparse

    A change in the public API of urlparse will also require a change in cgi.py's FieldStorage, FieldStorage.read_multi, parse and parse_multipart to expose that parameter since those functions forward arguments directly to urllib.parse.parse_qs internally.

    If we backport this, it seems that we will *also* need to backport all those changes to cgi's public API. Otherwise, just backporting the security fix part without allowing the user to switch would break existing code.

    Just my 2 cents on the issue. I'm not too familiar with security fixes in cpython anyways ;).

    @ret2libc
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    ret2libc mannequin commented Mar 10, 2021

    So far, we at openSUSE had to package at least SQLAlchemy, Twisted, yarl and furl. The author of the first one acknowledged use of semicolon as a bug. I don't think it was so bad.

    Did you upstream fixes for those packages?

    Asking because if this is considered a vulnerability in Python, it should be considered a vulnerability for every other tool/library that accept ; as separator. For example, Twisted seems to have a parse_qs method in web/http.py file that splits by both ; and &.

    Again, I feel like we are blaming the wrong piece of the stack, unless proxies are usually ignoring some arguments (e.g. utm_*) as part of the cache key, by default or in a very easy way.

    @gpshead
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    gpshead commented Mar 10, 2021

    Riccardo - FWIW I agree, the wrong part of the stack was blamed and a CVE was wrongly sought for against CPython on this one.

    It's sewage under the bridge at this point. The API change has shipped in several different stable releases and thus is something virtually Python all code must now deal with.

    Why was this a bad change to make? Python's parse_qsl obeyed the prevailing HTML 4 standard at the time it was written:

    https://www.w3.org/TR/html401/appendix/notes.html#ampersands-in-uris

    '''
    We recommend that HTTP server implementors, and in particular, CGI implementors support the use of ";" in place of "&"
    '''

    That turns out to have been bad advice in the standard. 15 years later the html5 standard quoted in Adam's snyk blog post links to its text on this which leaves no room for that interpretation.

    In that light, the correct thing to do for this issue would be to:

    • Make the default behavior change in 3.10 match the html5 standard [done].
    • Document that it matches the html4 standard in 3.9 and earlier without changing their default behavior [oops, too late, not done].
    • While adding the ability to allow applications to select the stricter behavior on those older versions. [only sort of done, and somewhat too late now that the strict version has already shipped as stable]

    Afterall, the existence of html5 didn't magically fix all of the html and web applications written in the two decades of web that came before it. Ask any browser author...

    @encukou
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    encukou commented Mar 11, 2021

    There's another part of the new implementation that looks a bit fishy: the separator argument now allows multi-character strings, so you can parse 'a=1b=2' with separator=''.
    Was this intentional?

    @orsenthil
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    Petr,

    On

    the separator argument now allows multi-character strings, so you can parse 'a=1b=2' with separator=''. Was this intentional?

    No, this was not intentional. The separator arg was just coice, for compatibility, if some wanted to use ; like the some URLs that were shared as use case. We didn't restrict about what was allowed or length of the separator.

    @orsenthil
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    New changeset b38601d by Ken Jin in branch 'master':
    bpo-42967: coerce bytes separator to string in urllib.parse_qs(l) (bpo-24818)
    b38601d

    @miss-islington
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    New changeset 6ec2fb4 by Miss Islington (bot) in branch '3.9':
    bpo-42967: coerce bytes separator to string in urllib.parse_qs(l) (GH-24818)
    6ec2fb4

    @mcepl
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    mcepl mannequin commented Apr 11, 2021

    Did you upstream fixes for those packages?

    Of course we did. Upstream first!

    @orsenthil
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    New changeset d5b80eb by Miss Islington (bot) in branch '3.8':
    bpo-42967: coerce bytes separator to string in urllib.parse_qs(l) (GH-24818) (bpo-25345)
    d5b80eb

    @ahmedsayeed1982 ahmedsayeed1982 mannequin removed 3.7 (EOL) end of life 3.9 only security fixes 3.10 only security fixes labels Nov 4, 2021
    @erlend-aasland erlend-aasland added 3.7 (EOL) end of life 3.9 only security fixes 3.10 only security fixes labels Nov 4, 2021
    @merwok
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    merwok commented Nov 4, 2021

    erlandaasland you’ve been editing closed issues today (got messages from at least 2). maybe submitting old browser tabs with obsolete form data?

    @erlend-aasland
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    Yes, cleaning up ahmedsayeed1982 spam. I did my best to revert the nosy list, component, versions, and assigned to changes. What did I mess up?

    @erlend-aasland
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    See bpo-12168 for a similar cleanup by Eryk Sun. There was approx. 20 spammed issues. Eryk fixed most of them; I did a couple.

    @merwok
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    merwok commented Nov 4, 2021

    See the changelog entry for 2021-11-04 10:31:24 (and the other ticket where Guido just commented)

    (and thanks for cleaning spam!)

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