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`authority-regex` returns the wrong authority

Moderate
plexus published GHSA-cp4w-6x4w-v2h5 Mar 27, 2023

Package

maven lambdaisland/uri (Maven)

Affected versions

<= 1.13.95

Patched versions

1.14.120

Description

Summary

authority-regex allows an attacker to send malicious URLs to be parsed by the lambdaisland/uri and return the wrong authority. This issue is similar to CVE-2020-8910.

Details

(def authority-regex #?(:clj #"\A(([^:]*)(:(.*))?@)?([^:]*)(:(\d*))?\z"

This regex doesn't handle the backslash (\) character in the username correctly, leading to a wrong output.
Payload: https://example.com\\@google.com
The returned host is google.com, but the correct host should be example.com.

urllib3 (Python) and google-closure-library (Javascript) return example.com as the host. Here the correct (or current) regex used by google-closure-library:

https://github.com/google/closure-library/blob/0e567abedb058e9b194a40cfa3ad4c507653bccf/closure/goog/uri/utils.js#L189

PoC

(ns poc.core)
(require '[lambdaisland.uri :refer (uri)])

(def myurl "https://example.com\\@google.com")

(defn -main
  []
   (println myurl)
   (println (:host (uri myurl)))
)

Impact

The library returns the wrong authority, and it can be abused to bypass host restrictions.

Reference

WHATWG Living URL spec, section 4.4 URL Parsing, host state: https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#url-parsing

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
Required
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

CVE ID

CVE-2023-28628

Weaknesses

No CWEs

Credits