CVE-2026-69205
## Summary Ember's HTTP/1.1 header parser matches the `Transfer-Encoding` header value with a case-sensitive substring test (`hValue.contains("chunked")`). RFC 9112 §7 requires transfer-coding names to be compared case-insensitively. A request carrying `Transfer-Encoding: Chunked` (capital C) is therefore not recognised as chunked, and Ember falls back to framing by `Content-Length` (or zero if absent) while a compliant intermediary frames the same bytes by chunked encoding. The two parsers then disagree on where the request body ends, enabling HTTP request smuggling (TE.CL / TE.0). The same line of code admits two further variants: - The substring test misfires on `Transfer-Encoding: notchunked` (an inverse desync — Ember treats it as chunked while a compliant intermediary rejects the unknown coding). - Header field bytes are decoded with the platform-default charset. Under UTF-8 the wire bytes `E2 84 AA` decode to U+212A KELVIN SIGN, which `String.equalsIgnoreCase` Unicode-case-folds to `k`, so `Transfer-Encoding: chun<U+212A>ed` matches `chunked` once the comparison is made case-insensitive without also pinning the decode to ISO-8859-1. ## Impact ### Server Request smuggling when ember-server is an origin behind an intermediary that honours `Transfer-Encoding` case-insensitively per RFC, forwards the header value verbatim, and reuses keep-alive connections to the backend: - Front-end security bypass: the smuggled request reaches paths the intermediary's ACL/auth layer would have blocked, with attacker-chosen method and headers. - Cross-user request hijack: a partial smuggled prefix left in Ember's connection buffer is concatenated with the next victim's request on the same pooled backend connection, exposing its headers (e.g. `Cookie`, `Authorization`) to the attacker. - Cache poisoning: the smuggled response is associated with the next request key in a caching proxy. ### Client ember-client shares the same `HeaderP.parse` on the
Properties
- ghsa_id
- GHSA-9998-894r-fwvr
- severity
- high
- summary
- Http4s Ember Transfer-Encoding value parsing (TE.CL / TE.0 request smuggling)
- cvss_score
- 8.7
- cve_id
- CVE-2026-69205
- cvss_vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N
- signal_observed_at
- 2026-09-15T21:13:07+00:00
- is_ghsa_only
- false
- ghsa_published
- 2026-09-15T19:54:25Z
- source_url
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-9998-894r-fwvr
- ghsa_updated
- 2026-09-15T19:54:26Z
Related Entities (8)
VULNERABLE_TO (3)
AFFECTS (3)
HAS_WEAKNESS (1)
REPORTED_BY (1)
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