Vulnerabilities > CVE-2023-37276 - HTTP Request Smuggling vulnerability in Aiohttp
Summary
aiohttp is an asynchronous HTTP client/server framework for asyncio and Python. aiohttp v3.8.4 and earlier are bundled with llhttp v6.0.6. Vulnerable code is used by aiohttp for its HTTP request parser when available which is the default case when installing from a wheel. This vulnerability only affects users of aiohttp as an HTTP server (ie `aiohttp.Application`), you are not affected by this vulnerability if you are using aiohttp as an HTTP client library (ie `aiohttp.ClientSession`). Sending a crafted HTTP request will cause the server to misinterpret one of the HTTP header values leading to HTTP request smuggling. This issue has been addressed in version 3.8.5. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade can reinstall aiohttp using `AIOHTTP_NO_EXTENSIONS=1` as an environment variable to disable the llhttp HTTP request parser implementation. The pure Python implementation isn't vulnerable.
Vulnerable Configurations
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- HTTP Request Splitting HTTP Request Splitting (also known as HTTP Request Smuggling) is an attack pattern where an attacker attempts to insert additional HTTP requests in the body of the original (enveloping) HTTP request in such a way that the browser interprets it as one request but the web server interprets it as two. There are several ways to perform HTTP request splitting attacks. One way is to include double Content-Length headers in the request to exploit the fact that the devices parsing the request may each use a different header. Another way is to submit an HTTP request with a "Transfer Encoding: chunked" in the request header set with setRequestHeader to allow a payload in the HTTP Request that can be considered as another HTTP Request by a subsequent parsing entity. A third way is to use the "Double CR in an HTTP header" technique. There are also a few less general techniques targeting specific parsing vulnerabilities in certain web servers.
- HTTP Request Smuggling HTTP Request Smuggling results from the discrepancies in parsing HTTP requests between HTTP entities such as web caching proxies or application firewalls. Entities such as web servers, web caching proxies, application firewalls or simple proxies often parse HTTP requests in slightly different ways. Under specific situations where there are two or more such entities in the path of the HTTP request, a specially crafted request is seen by two attacked entities as two different sets of requests. This allows certain requests to be smuggled through to a second entity without the first one realizing it.