GHSA-6x26-6r6f-m537
Thumbor treats ALLOWED_SOURCES string patterns as unescaped regex, allowing hostname bypass via wildcard dot
Packages
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
## Summary
The `ALLOWED_SOURCES` configuration is meant to restrict which hosts Thumbor's HTTP loader may fetch images from. Plain-string entries in that list (the overwhelming majority of real-world and documented configurations) are passed directly to `re.match()` without escaping. Because `.` is a regex wildcard, every dot in a domain name becomes a bypass vector: `s.glbimg.com` silently matches `sXglbimgYcom`, `sAglbimg.com`, and any other hostname that differs only at a dot position. This undermines the primary SSRF defence that `ALLOWED_SOURCES` is intended to provide.
## Affected component
`thumbor/loaders/http_loader.py` — `validate()`
## Proof of concept
```python
import re
from thumbor.config import Config
from thumbor.context import Context
from thumbor.loaders import http_loader as loader
config = Config()
config.ALLOWED_SOURCES = ["s.glbimg.com"] # typical user config
ctx = Context(None, config, None)
# These should be blocked — both return True due to the unescaped dot
print(loader.validate(ctx, "http://sXglbimgYcom/secret.jpg")) # True ← bypass
print(loader.validate(ctx, "http://sAglbimg.com/secret.jpg")) # True ← bypass
# Legitimate origin — correctly allowed
print(loader.validate(ctx, "http://s.glbimg.com/logo.jpg")) # True ← correct
```
## Root cause
`thumbor/loaders/http_loader.py` (before fix):
```python
for pattern in context.config.ALLOWED_SOURCES:
if isinstance(pattern, Pattern):
match = url
else:
pattern = f"^{pattern}$" # <-- dots not escaped, act as regex wildcard
match = res.hostname
if re.match(pattern, match):
return True
```
## Impact
An attacker who can influence the image source URL passed to Thumbor can fetch images from arbitrary hosts, bypassing the `ALLOWED_SOURCES` allowlist.
**Preconditions:**
- `ALLOWED_SOURCES` contains at least one plain-string entry (the common case; all official documentation examples use plain strings).
- The attacker can supply or influence the image URL — true whenever `ALLOW_UNSAFE_URL = True` (the default), or when the application forwards user input to a signed URL endpoint.
## Fix
Apply `re.escape()` to plain-string patterns before compiling them, so every
character is matched literally:
```python
else:
pattern = f"^{re.escape(pattern)}$" # dots and other metacharacters are now literal
match = res.hostname
```
This is a one-call addition with no breaking change for correctly written configurations. Users who need real regular-expression behaviour should supply a compiled pattern (`re.compile(r"s\.glbimg\.com")`), which is already handled by the existing `isinstance(pattern, Pattern)` branch and is unaffected by this change.
The `ALLOWED_SOURCES` docstring in `config.py` was also updated to document the two-mode behaviour explicitly.
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.