CVE-2021-21299

Multiple Transfer-Encoding headers misinterprets request payload

State
Published
Severity
4.8 Medium
Published
Feb 11, 2021
Updated
Aug 3, 2024
Reserved
Dec 22, 2020

Read the record on cve.org

Description

hyper is an open-source HTTP library for Rust (crates.io). In hyper from version 0.12.0 and before versions 0.13.10 and 0.14.3 there is a vulnerability that can enable a request smuggling attack. The HTTP server code had a flaw that incorrectly understands some requests with multiple transfer-encoding headers to have a chunked payload, when it should have been rejected as illegal. This combined with an upstream HTTP proxy that understands the request payload boundary differently can result in "request smuggling" or "desync attacks". To determine if vulnerable, all these things must be true: 1) Using hyper as an HTTP server (the client is not affected), 2) Using HTTP/1.1 (HTTP/2 does not use transfer-encoding), 3) Using a vulnerable HTTP proxy upstream to hyper. If an upstream proxy correctly rejects the illegal transfer-encoding headers, the desync attack cannot succeed. If there is no proxy upstream of hyper, hyper cannot start the desync attack, as the client will repair the headers before forwarding. This is fixed in versions 0.14.3 and 0.13.10. As a workaround one can take the following options: 1) Reject requests that contain a `transfer-encoding` header, 2) Ensure any upstream proxy handles `transfer-encoding` correctly.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.14.8 MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:NGitHub_M

Weaknesses

  • CWE-444 Inconsistent Interpretation of HTTP Requests ('HTTP Request Smuggling')

Affected Products

ProductVersions
hyperhyperium
  • < 0.13.10Affected
  • >= 0.14.0, < 0.14.3Affected

References

Every record here comes from the CVE Program’s CVE List. © 1999–2026 The MITRE Corporation. CVE is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. The records are reproduced under the CVE Program terms of use.