CVE & CISA-KEV Catalog

CVE-2021-21295

MEDIUMEPSS 97th pctl
5.9
CVSS v3
NVD

Description

Netty is an open-source, asynchronous event-driven network application framework for rapid development of maintainable high performance protocol servers & clients. In Netty (io.netty:netty-codec-http2) before version 4.1.60.Final there is a vulnerability that enables request smuggling. If a Content-Length header is present in the original HTTP/2 request, the field is not validated by `Http2MultiplexHandler` as it is propagated up. This is fine as long as the request is not proxied through as HTTP/1.1. If the request comes in as an HTTP/2 stream, gets converted into the HTTP/1.1 domain objects (`HttpRequest`, `HttpContent`, etc.) via `Http2StreamFrameToHttpObjectCodec `and then sent up to the child channel's pipeline and proxied through a remote peer as HTTP/1.1 this may result in request smuggling. In a proxy case, users may assume the content-length is validated somehow, which is not the case. If the request is forwarded to a backend channel that is a HTTP/1.1 connection, the Content-Length now has meaning and needs to be checked. An attacker can smuggle requests inside the body as it gets downgraded from HTTP/2 to HTTP/1.1. For an example attack refer to the linked GitHub Advisory. Users are only affected if all of this is true: `HTTP2MultiplexCodec` or `Http2FrameCodec` is used, `Http2StreamFrameToHttpObjectCodec` is used to convert to HTTP/1.1 objects, and these HTTP/1.1 objects are forwarded to another remote peer. This has been patched in 4.1.60.Final As a workaround, the user can do the validation by themselves by implementing a custom `ChannelInboundHandler` that is put in the `ChannelPipeline` behind `Http2StreamFrameToHttpObjectCodec`.

CWE-444

CVSS v3 Vector

Exploitability

Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityHigh
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionNone
ScopeUnchanged

Impact

ConfidentialityNone
IntegrityHigh
AvailabilityNone

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

Exploit Intelligence

18.89%probability of exploitation in 30 days
97thpercentile

Very high risk: more likely to be exploited than 97% of all known CVEs.

References

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This product uses NVD data but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. EPSS scores courtesy of FIRST.org (https://www.first.org/epss). Source: CISA KEV Catalog. Data as of 2024-11-21.