CVE-2023-47641: Inconsistent interpretation of `Content-Length` vs. `Transfer-Encoding` in aiohttp

Published Nov 14, 2023
·
Updated

Impact

Aiohttp has a security vulnerability regarding the inconsistent interpretation of the http protocol. As we know that HTTP/1.1 is persistent, if we have both Content-Length(CL) and Transfer-Encoding(TE) it can lead to incorrect interpretation of two entities that parse the HTTP and we can poison other sockets with this incorrect interpretation.

A possible Proof-of-Concept (POC) would be a configuration with a reverse proxy(frontend) that accepts both CL and TE headers and aiohttp as backend. As aiohttp parses anything with chunked, we can pass a chunked123 as TE, the frontend entity will ignore this header and will parse Content-Length. I can give a Dockerfile with the configuration if you want.

The impact of this vulnerability is that it is possible to bypass any proxy rule, poisoning sockets to other users like passing Authentication Headers, also if it is present an Open Redirect (just like CVE-2021-21330) we can combine it to redirect random users to our website and log the request.

References

- https://github.com/aio-libs/aiohttp/commit/f016f0680e4ace6742b03a70cb0382ce86abe371

Other sources

aiohttp is an asynchronous HTTP client/server framework for asyncio and Python. Affected versions of aiohttp have a security vulnerability regarding the inconsistent interpretation of the http protocol. HTTP/1.1 is a persistent protocol, if both Content-Length(CL) and Transfer-Encoding(TE) header values are present it can lead to incorrect interpretation of two entities that parse the HTTP and we can poison other sockets with this incorrect interpretation. A possible Proof-of-Concept (POC) would be a configuration with a reverse proxy(frontend) that accepts both CL and TE headers and aiohttp as backend. As aiohttp parses anything with chunked, we can pass a chunked123 as TE, the frontend entity will ignore this header and will parse Content-Length. The impact of this vulnerability is that it is possible to bypass any proxy rule, poisoning sockets to other users like passing Authentication Headers, also if it is present an Open Redirect an attacker could combine it to redirect random users to another website and log the request. This vulnerability has been addressed in release 3.8.0 of aiohttp. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Affected Software

2 affected componentsFixes available
pip/aiohttp<3.8.0
3.8.0
aiohttp aiohttp<3.8.0

Event History

Nov 14, 2023
Advisory Published
08:36 PM
CVE Published
via MITRE·08:44 PM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·08:44 PM
DescriptionSeverityWeakness

Frequently Asked Questions

1

What is the severity of CVE-2023-47641?

The severity of CVE-2023-47641 is low.

2

What is aiohttp?

aiohttp is an asynchronous HTTP client/server framework for asyncio and Python.

3

What is affected by CVE-2023-47641?

Versions up to and excluding aiohttp 3.8.0 are affected by CVE-2023-47641.

4

How can I fix CVE-2023-47641?

Upgrade aiohttp to version 3.8.0 or later.

5

What is the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) for CVE-2023-47641?

The CWE for CVE-2023-47641 is CWE-444.

Contact

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