High severity · published Aug 24, 2021
CVE-2021-39155
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
7.5
CVSS
1.3%
EPSS
No
On KEV
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.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)1.3% · higher than 69% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
IS
Istio · Istio
before 1.9.8; 1.10.0 before 1.10.4; 1.11.0 before 1.11.1 · source: NVD
Affected product
IS
Istio
Istio
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