PyPI · tornado
Tornado vulnerable to Header Injection and XSS via reason argument
reason argumentThe reason argument (used by both RequestHandler.set_status and tornado.web.HTTPError is designed to allow applications to pass custom "reason" phrases (the "Not Found" in HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found) to the HTTP status line (mainly for non-standard status codes). Vulnerabilities exist in Tornado versions prior to 6.5.3 if untrusted data is passed as the reason argument.
In vulnerable versions, the supplied reason phrase is used unescaped in HTTP headers (where it could be used for header injection) or in HTML in the default error page (where it could be used for XSS).
HTTPError/set_status with an attacker-controlled reason (e.g., via query parameter used by developer).reason are affected.Aside from upgrading to Tornado 6.5.3 or newer, the vulnerability can be mitigated by not using untrusted data for the reason argument. In the intended use case the reason argument would generally be a string literal and not derived from user input. Also, the reason argument is rarely required (reason phrases are not used at all in HTTP/2) and can generally be omitted.
For a general-purpose error message in HTTPError, consider using the log_message argument instead of reason.
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Check my repoSources: CISA KEV (public domain), OSV.dev & GitHub Advisory Database (CC-BY-4.0), FIRST EPSS, NVD/CWE (public domain). Served live from the Stateward advisory database.