Envoy is a cloud-native edge/middle/service proxy. Envoy does not decode escaped slash sequences %2F
and %5C
in HTTP URL paths in versions 1.18.2 and before. A remote attacker may craft a path with escaped slashes, e.g. /something%2F..%2Fadmin
, to bypass access control, e.g. a block on /admin
. A backend server could then decode slash sequences and normalize path and provide an attacker access beyond the scope provided for by the access control policy. ### Impact Escalation of Privileges when using RBAC or JWT filters with enforcement based on URL path. Users with back end servers that interpret %2F
and /
and %5C
and \
interchangeably are impacted. ### Attack Vector URL paths containing escaped slash characters delivered by untrusted client. Patches in versions 1.18.3, 1.17.3, 1.16.4, 1.15.5 contain new path normalization option to decode escaped slash characters. As a workaround, if back end servers treat %2F
and /
and %5C
and \
interchangeably and a URL path based access control is configured, one may reconfigure the back end server to not treat %2F
and /
and %5C
and \
interchangeably.