adobe / adobe/aem-project-archetype

Disable passing on authorization header by default

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#1,081 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Dominant language
JavaScript
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596
Forks
431
Avg merge
10d 6h
Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

In https://github.com/adobe/aem-project-archetype/blob/183706c16758fc02a8becc16d2dc8a5b55e7ef46/src/main/archetype/dispatcher.cloud/src/conf.dispatcher.d/clientheaders/default_clientheaders.any#L43 the `Authorization` header is forwarded to AEM. That can be abused with certain endpoints to do brute-force credential attacks on the Basic Auth Handler (compare with https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/adobe-experience-manager/disable-basic-authentication/m-p/359084/highlight/true#M48638). Therefore I would argue that by default those headers should not be forwarded to the backend. The default AEM authorization relies on cookies only (and not the authorization header which is only used for OAuth and Basic Auth). As that is an immutable file and customers can only add additional headers on top, this base configuration makes it impossible to strip Authorization headers (except with workarounds like using `mod_headers`)

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Read src/main/archetype/dispatcher.cloud/src/conf.dispatcher.d/clientheaders/default_clientheaders.any at line 43 and review how the default client-header configuration forwards Authorization to AEM. Confirm the default configuration no longer forwards that header while preserving the stated cookie-based authorization behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
apache
Domain
security
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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