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OpenAdvisories
High · 8.3 CVE-2021-39155 EUVD-2021-1611GHSA-7774-7vr3-cc8j

Authorization Policy Bypass Due to Case Insensitive Host Comparison

Published Aug 24, 2021 · Updated Aug 4, 2024 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

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.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
istio istio <= 1.9.8, >= 1.10.0, < 1.10.4, >= 1.11.0, < 1.11.1 —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Red Hat Service Mesh 2 servicemesh +6 2.0.7-3.el8 RHSA-2021:3272
Red Hat Service Mesh 1 servicemesh +8 1.1.17-3.el8 RHSA-2021:3273
Red Hat Service Mesh 1 servicemesh-proxy 1.1.17-2.el8 RHSA-2021:3273

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Go istio.io/istio < 1.9.8 1.9.8 GHSA-7774-7vr3-cc8j
Go istio.io/istio >= 1.10.0, < 1.10.4 1.10.4 GHSA-7774-7vr3-cc8j
Go istio.io/istio >= 1.11.0, < 1.11.1 1.11.1 GHSA-7774-7vr3-cc8j

Advisories 2

References