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CVE-2021-39155
August 24, 2021
Istio is an open source platform for providing a uniform way to integrate microservices, manage traffic flow across microservices, enforce policies and aggregate telemetry data. According to "RFC 4343" (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4343), 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 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 are available in Istio 1.11.1, Istio 1.10.4 and Istio 1.9.8. As a work around 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" (https://istio.io/latest/docs/ops/best-practices/security/#case-normalization) guide.
Additional Notes
The description of this vulnerability differs from MITRE.
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CVSS v4
Base Score:
8.7
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Attack Requirements
NONE
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
PASSIVE
Vulnerable System Confidentiality
HIGH
Vulnerable System Integrity
HIGH
Vulnerable System Availability
LOW
Subsequent System Confidentiality
NONE
Subsequent System Integrity
NONE
Subsequent System Availability
NONE
CVSS v3
Base Score:
8.3
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
REQUIRED
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
HIGH
Integrity
HIGH
Availability
LOW
CVSS v2
Base Score:
5
Access Vector
NETWORK
Access Complexity
LOW
Authentication
NONE
Confidentiality Impact
PARTIAL
Integrity Impact
NONE
Availability Impact
NONE
Weakness Type (CWE)
Improper Handling of Case Sensitivity
Incorrect Authorization
EPSS
Base Score:
0.17