Summary Envoy's extproc HTTP filter is at risk of crashing if a local reply is sent to the external server due to the filter's life time issue. A known situation is the fail of a websocket handshake will trigger a local reply leading to the crash of Envoy.
PoC If both websocket and extproc are enabled, a failed handshake will trigger a local reply, thus extproc will crash.
Mitigation 1. Disable websocket traffic 2. Change the websocket response from backend to always return 101 Switch protocol based on RFC. 3. Apply the patch and the extproc filter will not send the local reply that is generated by Envoy to the extproc server for processing. 4. Apply the patch that the router will cancel the upstream requests when sending a local reply.
Impact Denial of service
Reporter Vasilios Syrakis Fernando Cainelli