Host Header Injection

It was possible to supply an additional host header as part of the request to affect the behavior of the application.

  • http
  • header
  • string manipulation

A host header injection vulnerability occurs when a variant of host header such as X-Forwarded-Host is used by the application to determine the current host. This header is often used in backend services.

Impact

The host header injection vulnerability can be used in a wide range of attack scenarios from influencing password reset forms to accessing secrets via Server-Side Request Forgery vulnerability.

Solution

Do not rely on input information such as headers for business-critical decisions. Instead, ensure that the application is aware of the server environment with a static configuration.

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