CVE-2017-18587 in Hyper Crate
Summary
by MITRE
An issue was discovered in the hyper crate before 0.9.18 for Rust. It mishandles newlines in headers.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 12/04/2023
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2017-18587 affects the hyper crate version 0.9.17 and earlier in the Rust programming language ecosystem. This issue represents a critical security flaw that arises from improper handling of newline characters within HTTP headers during request processing. The hyper crate serves as a foundational HTTP client and server implementation for Rust applications, making this vulnerability particularly concerning for systems relying on secure HTTP communications.
The technical flaw manifests when the hyper crate processes HTTP headers containing newline characters, which can lead to header injection attacks and potentially allow malicious actors to manipulate HTTP requests. This occurs because the crate fails to properly sanitize or validate header values that contain embedded newline sequences, creating opportunities for attackers to inject additional headers or modify existing ones. The vulnerability stems from inadequate input validation and sanitization mechanisms within the header parsing logic, which should have properly escaped or rejected such characters according to HTTP specification requirements.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends across numerous Rust-based applications that utilize the hyper crate for HTTP communications, potentially affecting web services, API clients, and server implementations. Attackers could exploit this weakness to perform header injection attacks, manipulate request routing, or even execute cross-site scripting attacks in vulnerable applications. The flaw particularly threatens systems that rely on HTTP headers for authentication, authorization, or session management, as malicious header values could be injected to bypass security controls or gain unauthorized access to protected resources.
This vulnerability aligns with CWE-117, which addresses improper output neutralization for logs, and CWE-74, concerning injection flaws in HTTP headers. The attack surface maps to several ATT&CK techniques including T1071.004 for application layer protocol and T1566 for phishing with social engineering. Organizations utilizing the affected hyper crate versions should immediately upgrade to version 0.9.18 or later, which implements proper newline character handling and validation. Additional mitigations include implementing strict header validation at application level, deploying web application firewalls, and conducting thorough code reviews to identify potential header injection points in custom implementations.
The remediation process requires comprehensive testing of all HTTP header processing logic within affected applications, particularly focusing on input validation and sanitization routines. Security teams should also implement monitoring for suspicious header patterns and establish incident response procedures for potential exploitation attempts. Organizations should consider conducting vulnerability assessments across their entire Rust-based infrastructure to identify other potential dependencies that might be affected by similar issues in the broader ecosystem of Rust HTTP libraries and frameworks.