mediumVulnerability

GHSA-xhj4-vrgc-hr34

A vulnerability in `actix-http`'s HTTP/1.1 request parser allows an unauthenticated remote client to smuggle requests in deployments where a front-end HTTP intermediary and the Actix backend disagree about whether `Content-Length` or `Transfer-Encoding: chunked` defines the request body length. ## Severity **Medium**. This is an HTTP request smuggling vulnerability that can be triggered over the network without application-level credentials. Exploitation requires a specific proxy topology: an upstream proxy, WAF, load balancer, or similar intermediary must use `Content-Length` framing while forwarding the conflicting `Transfer-Encoding: chunked` request to an Actix backend over a reused HTTP/1.1 connection. ## Affected Versions - `actix-http`: versions up to and including **3.12.0** ## Description HTTP/1.1 requests that contain both `Content-Length` and `Transfer-Encoding: chunked` are ambiguous and must be rejected by recipients to avoid request smuggling. Affected versions of `actix-http` accepted a request with a syntactically valid `Content-Length` header and `Transfer-Encoding: chunked` on the same HTTP/1.1 message. The parser then selected chunked decoding instead of rejecting the conflicting framing signals. In a CL.TE proxy topology, an intermediary may treat bytes after the declared `Content-Length` body as part of the first request, while the Actix backend stops at the terminating chunk marker and parses the remaining bytes on the backend connection as a second HTTP request. This creates a backend-side request desynchronization primitive. The issue is limited to HTTP/1.1 request parsing. ## Impact **HTTP request smuggling** * **Attack Vector:** Network, unauthenticated. * **Effect:** Backend request desynchronization with low integrity impact to requests processed by the vulnerable Actix service. * **Scope:** Actix services using affected `actix-http` versions behind an HTTP/1.1 intermediary that forwards ambiguous `Content-Length` plus `Transf

Properties

ghsa_id
GHSA-xhj4-vrgc-hr34
severity
medium
summary
actix-http has HTTP/1.1 CL.TE Request Smuggling
cve_id
GHSA-xhj4-vrgc-hr34
is_ghsa_only
true
ghsa_published
2026-04-22T14:37:30Z
source_url
https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-xhj4-vrgc-hr34
ghsa_updated
2026-04-22T14:37:31Z

Related Entities (4)

VULNERABLE_TO (1)

[Software]rust/actix-http

AFFECTS (1)

[Software]rust/actix-http

HAS_WEAKNESS (1)

[Weakness]Inconsistent Interpretation of HTTP Requests ('HTTP Request/Response Smuggling')

REPORTED_BY (1)

[Source]GitHub Advisory Database

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