AWS API Gateway Header Smuggling and Cache Confusion
Published Tue, Sep 19th, 2023
Platforms
Summary
Researchers at Omegapoint identified two issues in AWS API Gateway authorizers: 1) A header rewrite feature could be abused to bypass authorization by overwriting headers after the authorizer lambda processed them. 2) Caching of authorization policies could be exploited to reuse cached policies with modified identification sources, bypassing the authorizer.
Affected Services
API Gateway
Remediation
Implement proper defense-in-depth access controls in applications behind API Gateway, rather than relying solely on the gateway authorizer for authentication and authorization.
Monitor for unexpected access patterns or data access across tenant boundaries. Review logs for suspicious header combinations or multiple occurrences of authorization-related headers.