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What is Host header injection attack?
A Host header attack, also known as Host header injection, is a web attack where the attacker provides a false Host header to the web application. Find more information about other types of injection attacks.
How does Host header injection work?
HTTP Host header attacks exploit vulnerable websites that handle the value of the Host header in an unsafe way. If the server implicitly trusts the Host header, and fails to validate or escape it properly, an attacker may be able to use this input to inject harmful payloads that manipulate server-side behavior.
What is Host header for?
The Host request header specifies the host and port number of the server to which the request is being sent. If no port is included, the default port for the service requested (e.g., 443 for an HTTPS URL, and 80 for an HTTP URL) is implied. A Host header field must be sent in all HTTP/1.1 request messages.
What is Host injection?
Host Header Injection (HHI) A Web server handles the Host header value to dispatch the request to the destination domain. An attacker can manipulate this Host header with some fake Domains to steal sensitive information.
Is http host header required?
HTTP 1.1 requires the Host field. None of the HTTP Headers are required in an HTTP/1.0 Request. There are no required Response headers either.
How to mitigate the effect of host header injection?
1) Host header injection can be mitigated by rejecting any request that doesn’t match the target domain. 2) Validating Host header to ensure that the request is originating from that target host or not.
How to use Host header injection in Nginx?
Like Varnish, a popular content delivery network uses the first occurrence of host header, Nginx uses the last occurrence of host header and Apache concatenates all host headers present in the request to determine the host header to use. For example: We can poison an Nginx cache with URLs pointing at evil.com by making the following request:
Where can I find wildcard host header support?
Hold down the Windows Key, press the letter X and then click Control Panel. Click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Select the server on which your site is deployed, from the list in connections.
Is there a way to bypass host headers?
There is another way of bypassing arbitrary Host headers by using the X-Forwarded-Host Header. The X-Forwarded-Host HTTP header is used to forward the original Host header value to the origin server.