Résumé

Skipper has OPA body-authz bypass: truncated_body mitigation fails open on chunked/HTTP-2 (incomplete fix GHSA-8qqm-fp2q-v734)

Détails de l’avis

  • Affected component: filters/openpolicyagent/openpolicyagent.go → ExtractHttpBodyOptionally; combined with github.com/open-policy-agent/opa-envoy-plugin envoyauth/request.go → getParsedBody / checkIfHTTPBodyTruncated. Filter: opaAuthorizeRequestWithBody.
  • Affected versions: <= 0.27.33 (current HEAD e7d7014c). The truncated_body mitigation was introduced/recommended in v0.27.26 (advisory GHSA-8qqm-fp2q-v734) and remains bypassable.
  • Fix chain being audited: CVE-2026-50197 (GHSA-659f-rgp5-w4wf, commit 3152f3b0) → GHSA-8qqm-fp2q-v734 (docs + code, commit 1be950cd #4126, v0.27.26). This finding is the third, still-open variant.

Summary

Skipper's opaAuthorizeRequestWithBody filter authorizes requests by handing the (bounded) request body to Open Policy Agent. When a body exceeds -open-policy-agent-max-request-body-size (default 1 MB), Skipper truncates it before OPA sees it. Advisory GHSA-8qqm-fp2q-v734 established that deny-on-presence / body-inspecting policies fail OPEN on oversized bodies, and its remediation instructs policy authors to guard on input.attributes.request.http.truncated_body (implemented as the top-level input.truncated_body):

default allow := false
allow if {
    input.truncated_body == false
    # ... body-based conditions
}

That mitigation is itself incomplete. The truncated_body flag is computed by the OPA envoy plugin only when a content-length header is present. A request sent with Transfer-Encoding: chunked (HTTP/1.1) or over HTTP/2 carries no content-length, so truncated_body is left false even though Skipper truncated the body. The mitigated policy therefore evaluates input.truncated_body == false as true and ALLOWS the request, while the full, un-inspected oversized payload is forwarded to the upstream (Skipper's bufferedBodyReader streams the buffered prefix and then continues draining the original body).

The transport that defeats the mitigation — chunked / HTTP-2 without Content-Length — is the exact transport class the original CVE-2026-50197 was about; the GHSA-8qqm fix closed the declared-Content-Length variant and its positive-control test only exercised small chunked bodies, never oversized chunked bodies.

Root cause

opa-envoy-plugin/envoyauth/request.go:

func getParsedBody(...) (any, bool, error) {
    if val, ok := headers["content-type"]; ok {
        if strings.Contains(val, "application/json") {
            ...
            if val, ok := headers["content-length"]; ok {          // <-- only path that sets truncation
                truncated, err := checkIfHTTPBodyTruncated(val, int64(len(body)))
                ...
                if truncated { return nil, true, nil }
            }
            ...
        } else if ... "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" { /* same content-length gate */ }
          else if ... "multipart/form-data"            { /* same content-length gate */ }
    }
    return data, false, nil     // <-- no content-length  ==> truncated_body = false
}

func checkIfHTTPBodyTruncated(contentLength string, bodyLength int64) (bool, error) {
    cl, _ := strconv.ParseInt(contentLength, 10, 64)
    if cl != -1 && cl > bodyLength { return true, nil }
    return false, nil
}

Truncation can only ever be signalled by comparing content-length against the received body length. With chunked/HTTP-2 there is no content-length, so the comparison is skipped and truncated_body is reported false. Skipper (ExtractHttpBodyOptionally) meanwhile does truncate the chunked body to maxBodyBytes (it sets expectedSize = maxBodyBytes when req.ContentLength < 0), producing the exact divergence: OPA is told "not truncated", but the body was truncated, and the backend receives the whole thing.

Reachability

  1. Deployment runs opaAuthorizeRequestWithBody with a body-inspecting policy that follows the GHSA-8qqm mitigation (allow if input.truncated_body == false). This is the maintainer-recommended configuration (advisory + v0.27.26 docs).
  2. Attacker sends a request whose body exceeds max-request-body-size using Transfer-Encoding: chunked (or HTTP/2). No content-length header is present.
  3. ExtractHttpBodyOptionally reads/truncates the body to maxBodyBytes; rawBody is the truncated prefix.
  4. AdaptToExtAuthRequest forwards the lowercased headers (no content-length) and the truncated RawBody to OPA.
  5. getParsedBody finds no content-length → truncated_body = false; for a non-parsed content-type it also returns parsed_body = null with no error.
  6. Policy: input.truncated_body == false is satisfied → allow = true.
  7. Skipper forwards the request; bufferedBodyReader.Read serves the buffered prefix and then continues reading the original req.Body, delivering the full oversized payload to the upstream.

Every guard on the path is accounted for: the only "guard" is truncated_body, and it is defeated by omitting content-length.

Impact

Bypass of OPA request-body authorization for any deployment that adopted the official truncated_body mitigation. Requests that the policy is meant to reject (oversized / un-inspectable bodies, or bodies whose forbidden content lies beyond the inspection window) are authorized and forwarded in full to the protected upstream. Same security property and severity class as CVE-2026-50197 / GHSA-8qqm (both High).

CVSS 3.1

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N = 7.5 High

  • AV:N — remote HTTP request.
  • AC:L — single crafted request; no race/special conditions (just chunked framing + padding).
  • PR:N / UI:N — unauthenticated, no user interaction.
  • S:U — impact within the authorized component/upstream trust scope.
  • C:N — no direct disclosure by the bypass itself.
  • I:H — authorization control is bypassed; forbidden request content reaches the upstream (integrity of the access-control decision / protected resource).
  • A:N — not primarily an availability issue.

(Conditional: exploitable only where opaAuthorizeRequestWithBody is used with a truncated_body-gated policy — i.e. deployments that followed the GHSA-8qqm mitigation. Consistent with the conditional nature of the parent CVEs.)

Proof of Concept

Executable Go test added to the OPA filter package. It stands up a real Skipper proxy (proxy.WithParams) + a real OPA control plane (opasdktest) with WithMaxRequestBodyBytes(32) and the advisory's verbatim mitigation policy (allow if input.truncated_body == false), routed to a recording upstream.

  • Positive control — oversized body with Content-Length → truncated_body=true → 403 (mitigation works).
  • Bypass — identical oversized body sent chunked (no Content-Length) → truncated_body=false → 200, and the upstream receives the full 66-byte payload past the 32-byte inspection cap.

Command and observed benign output:

$ go test ./filters/openpolicyagent/ -run TestTruncatedBodyChunkedBypass -count=1 -v

    poc_truncated_body_chunked_test.go:148: [content-length ] status=403 upstream_body_bytes=-1
    poc_truncated_body_chunked_test.go:154: [chunked        ] status=200 upstream_body_bytes=66
--- PASS: TestTruncatedBodyChunkedBypass (0.11s)
PASS
  • content-length variant → 403, upstream received nothing (-1) — mitigation works.
  • chunked variant (byte-identical body) → 200, upstream received the full 66-byte payload past the 32-byte cap — authorization bypass.

(Full PoC source is appended below by the submission tool via --poc-file.)

Adversarial re-read (refutation attempts)

  • "Truncated JSON just fails to parse → fail closed." True for application/json when truncation lands mid-token, but the bypass does not rely on JSON: application/x-www-form-urlencoded parses leniently after truncation, and unparsed/absent content-types return (nil, false, nil) with no error. The load

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