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Weakness (CWE)

CWE-551: Incorrect Behavior Order: Authorization Before Parsing and Canonicalization

Base Incomplete

If a web server does not fully parse requested URLs before it examines them for authorization, it may be possible for an attacker to bypass authorization protection.

More detail

For instance, the character strings /./ and / both mean current directory. If /SomeDirectory is a protected directory and an attacker requests /./SomeDirectory, the attacker may be able to gain access to the resource if /./ is not converted to / before the authorization check is performed.

How to prevent it (1 mitigation)
  1. Architecture and Design

    URL Inputs should be decoded and canonicalized to the application's current internal representation before being validated and processed for authorization. Make sure that your application does not decode the same input twice. Such errors could be used to bypass allowlist schemes by introducing dangerous inputs after they have been checked.

Source: MITRE CWE-551

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  • Medium 5.3
    CVE-2021-34429 Public exploit EPSS 99%

    Encoded URIs can access WEB-INF directory in Eclipse Jetty

    For Eclipse Jetty versions 9.4.37-9.4.42, 10.0.1-10.0.5 & 11.0.1-11.0.5, URIs can be crafted using some encoded characters to access the content of the WEB-INF directory and/or bypass some security constraints. This is a variation of the vulnerability reporte…

  • Medium 5.3
    CVE-2021-28164 Public exploit EPSS 82%

    Authorization Before Parsing and Canonicalization in jetty

    In Eclipse Jetty 9.4.37.v20210219 to 9.4.38.v20210224, the default compliance mode allows requests with URIs that contain %2e or %2e%2e segments to access protected resources within the WEB-INF directory. For example a request to /context/%2e/WEB-INF/web.xml …