THREATPORT/VULNERABILITY/CVE-2021-21299
MEDIUM SEVERITY

CVE-2021-21299

Hyper vulnerability

CVSS
4.8
EPSS
4.8%
EPSS pct
91th
Exploited
No known
hyper is an open-source HTTP library for Rust (crates.io). In hyper from version 0.12.0 and before versions 0.13.10 and 0.14.3 there is a vulnerability that can enable a request smuggling attack. The HTTP server code had a flaw that incorrectly understands some requests with multiple transfer-encoding headers to have a chunked payload, when it should have been rejected as illegal. This combined with an upstream HTTP proxy that understands the request payload boundary differently can result in "request smuggling" or "desync attacks". To determine if vulnerable, all these things must be true: 1) Using hyper as an HTTP server (the client is not affected), 2) Using HTTP/1.1 (HTTP/2 does not use transfer-encoding), 3) Using a vulnerable HTTP proxy upstream to hyper. If an upstream proxy correctly rejects the illegal transfer-encoding headers, the desync attack cannot succeed. If there is no proxy upstream of hyper, hyper cannot start the desync attack, as the client will repair the headers before forwarding. This is fixed in versions 0.14.3 and 0.13.10. As a workaround one can take the following options: 1) Reject requests that contain a `transfer-encoding` header, 2) Ensure any upstream proxy handles `transfer-encoding` correctly.
Affected vendor
Hyper
Affected product
Hyper
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
Weakness type (CWE)
Published
2021-02-11

Risk analysis

Based on its CVSS vector, this vulnerability is exploitable over the network, high attack complexity, requiring no privileges, no user interaction. Successful exploitation leads to low impact to confidentiality, low impact to integrity.

Its EPSS score of 4.8% reflects a lower probability of exploitation activity in the wild over the next 30 days, placing it above 91% of all scored CVEs.

Check your external exposure to CVE-2021-21299

  • Confirm whether Hyper Hyper is running on any internet-facing host or subdomain.
  • Match discovered service fingerprints against the version affected by CVE-2021-21299.
  • Prioritise remediation if the asset is public, business-critical, or near authentication/payment flows.

How ThreatPort helps with CVE-2021-21299

ThreatPort's external attack surface scanner checks your internet-facing assets — agentlessly, from the outside in — for the exposed services and versions that CVE-2021-21299 affects, then prioritises the finding by real risk using CISA KEV and FIRST.org EPSS.

Run a free external exposure scan

Are you exposed to CVE-2021-21299?

Run an instant, non-intrusive external scan to check your attack surface for CVE-2021-21299.

Start free scan

No credit card. Agentless.