Vulnerability GHSA-9hf4-67fc-4vf4

Medium Risk
MEDIUM RISK
CVSS Score: 5.4
Score Range: 4.0–6.9
Medium severity vulnerabilities (CVSS 4.0–6.9). Important issues that meaningfully reduce security confidence.
2 years ago
September 20, 2024 at 02:40 PM UTC
Puma's header normalization allows for client to clobber proxy set headers
0.8.0 - 5.6.8 and 6.0.0 - 6.4.2
0.8.0 - 5.6.8 and 6.0.0 - 6.4.2

Summary

Puma's header normalization allows for client to clobber proxy set headers

Details

Impact

Clients could clobber values set by intermediate proxies (such as X-Forwarded-For) by providing a underscore version of the same header (X-Forwarded_For). Any users trusting headers set by their proxy may be affected. Attackers may be able to downgrade connections to HTTP (non-SSL) or redirect responses, which could cause confidentiality leaks if combined with a separate MITM attack.

Patches

v6.4.3/v5.6.9 now discards any headers using underscores if the non-underscore version also exists. Effectively, allowing the proxy defined headers to always win.

Workarounds

Nginx has a underscores_in_headers configuration variable to discard these headers at the proxy level.

Any users that are implicitly trusting the proxy defined headers for security or availability should immediately cease doing so until upgraded to the fixed versions.

Impacted packages

Timeline

Published
2 years ago
September 20, 2024 at 02:40 PM UTC
Fixed (5.6.9)
2 years ago
September 19, 2024 at 05:41 AM UTC
Fixed (6.4.3)
2 years ago
September 19, 2024 at 05:49 AM UTC
Last Modified
1 month ago
September 10, 2026 at 03:50 AM UTC