CVE-2021-22881 (actionpack): Possible Open Redirect in Host Authorization Middleware

ADVISORIES

GEM

actionpack

FRAMEWORK

Ruby on Rails

SEVERITY

CVSS v3.x: 6.1 (Medium)

UNAFFECTED VERSIONS

< 6.0.0

PATCHED VERSIONS

~> 6.0.3, >= 6.0.3.5
>= 6.1.2.1

DESCRIPTION

There is a possible open redirect vulnerability in the Host Authorization middleware in Action Pack. This vulnerability has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2021-22881.

Versions Affected: >= 6.0.0 Not affected: < 6.0.0 Fixed Versions: 6.1.2.1, 6.0.3.5

Impact

Specially crafted "Host" headers in combination with certain "allowed host" formats can cause the Host Authorization middleware in Action Pack to redirect users to a malicious website.

Impacted applications will have allowed hosts with a leading dot. For example, configuration files that look like this:

config.hosts &lt;&lt;  '.tkte.ch'

When an allowed host contains a leading dot, a specially crafted Host header can be used to redirect to a malicious website.

Workarounds

In the case a patch can’t be applied, the following monkey patch can be used in an initializer:

module ActionDispatch
  class HostAuthorization
    private
      def authorized?(request)
        valid_host = /
          \A
          (?&lt;host&gt;[a-z0-9.-]+|\[[a-f0-9]*:[a-f0-9\.:]+\])
          (:\d+)?
          \z
        /x

        origin_host = valid_host.match(
          request.get_header(&quot;HTTP_HOST&quot;).to_s.downcase)
        forwarded_host = valid_host.match(
          request.x_forwarded_host.to_s.split(/,\s?/).last)

        origin_host &amp;&amp; @permissions.allows?(origin_host[:host]) &amp;&amp; (
          forwarded_host.nil? || @permissions.allows?(forwarded_host[:host]))
      end
  end
end

RubySec