CVE-2021-39155

Authorization Policy Bypass Due to Case Insensitive Host Comparison

HIGH
7.5
CVSS Score
Published: August 24, 2021 at 10:25 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 04:03 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorIstio

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Severity
HIGH7.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 1%

Description

Istio is an open source platform for providing a uniform way to integrate microservices, manage traffic flow across microservices, enforce policies and aggregate telemetry data. According to [RFC 4343](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4343), Istio authorization policy should compare the hostname in the HTTP Host header in a case insensitive way, but currently the comparison is case sensitive. The proxy will route the request hostname in a case-insensitive way which means the authorization policy could be bypassed. As an example, the user may have an authorization policy that rejects request with hostname "httpbin.foo" for some source IPs, but the attacker can bypass this by sending the request with hostname "Httpbin.Foo". Patches are available in Istio 1.11.1, Istio 1.10.4 and Istio 1.9.8. As a work around a Lua filter may be written to normalize Host header before the authorization check. This is similar to the Path normalization presented in the [Security Best Practices](https://istio.io/latest/docs/ops/best-practices/security/#case-normalization) guide.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v < 1.10.4v < 1.11.1v < 1.9.81.10.0 ≤ v < 1.10.41.11.0 ≤ v < 1.11.1<= 1.9.8
Affected range stops below 1.10.4, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 1.11.1, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 1.9.8, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.

References (2)

CVSS

Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
HIGH
Integrity
NONE
Availability
NONE
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-178

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