AVID-2026-R1290

Description

Inconsistent interpretation of Content-Length vs. Transfer-Encoding in aiohttp (CVE-2023-47641)

Details

aiohttp is an asynchronous HTTP client/server framework for asyncio and Python. Affected versions of aiohttp have a security vulnerability regarding the inconsistent interpretation of the http protocol. HTTP/1.1 is a persistent protocol, if both Content-Length(CL) and Transfer-Encoding(TE) header values are present it can lead to incorrect interpretation of two entities that parse the HTTP and we can poison other sockets with this incorrect interpretation. A possible Proof-of-Concept (POC) would be a configuration with a reverse proxy(frontend) that accepts both CL and TE headers and aiohttp as backend. As aiohttp parses anything with chunked, we can pass a chunked123 as TE, the frontend entity will ignore this header and will parse Content-Length. The impact of this vulnerability is that it is possible to bypass any proxy rule, poisoning sockets to other users like passing Authentication Headers, also if it is present an Open Redirect an attacker could combine it to redirect random users to another website and log the request. This vulnerability has been addressed in release 3.8.0 of aiohttp. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Reason for inclusion in AVID: CVE-2023-47641 targets aiohttp, a widely used Python HTTP framework often employed in AI model serving and data pipeline services. The vulnerability concerns HTTP request handling (Content-Length vs Transfer-Encoding) that can lead to request smuggling, proxy bypass, and potential redirects. This is a software vulnerability in a component commonly used in AI deployment stacks, representing a software supply-chain risk for general-purpose AI systems. Evidence includes the CVE entry, description, and patch release details.

References

Affected or Relevant Artifacts

Developer: aio-libs
Deployer: aio-libs
Artifact Details:

Type	Name
System	aiohttp

Impact

AVID Taxonomy Categorization

Risk domains: Security
SEP subcategories: S0100: Software Vulnerability
Lifecycle stages: L06: Deployment

CVSS

Version	3.1
Vector String	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N
Base Score	3.4
Base Severity	🟢 Low
Attack Vector	NETWORK
Attack Complexity	🔴 High
Privileges Required	NONE
User Interaction	REQUIRED
Scope	CHANGED
Confidentiality Impact	🟢 Low
Integrity Impact	NONE
Availability Impact	NONE

CWE

ID	Description
CWE-444	CWE-444: Inconsistent Interpretation of HTTP Requests (‘HTTP Request/Response Smuggling’)

Other information

Report Type: Advisory
Credits:
Date Reported: 2023-11-14
Version: 0.3.3
AVID Entry