Vulnerability Database

328,409

Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2021-21299

hyper is an open-source HTTP library for Rust (crates.io). In hyper from version 0.12.0 and before versions 0.13.10 and 0.14.3 there is a vulnerability that can enable a request smuggling attack. The HTTP server code had a flaw that incorrectly understands some requests with multiple transfer-encoding headers to have a chunked payload, when it should have been rejected as illegal. This combined with an upstream HTTP proxy that understands the request payload boundary differently can result in "request smuggling" or "desync attacks". To determine if vulnerable, all these things must be true: 1) Using hyper as an HTTP server (the client is not affected), 2) Using HTTP/1.1 (HTTP/2 does not use transfer-encoding), 3) Using a vulnerable HTTP proxy upstream to hyper. If an upstream proxy correctly rejects the illegal transfer-encoding headers, the desync attack cannot succeed. If there is no proxy upstream of hyper, hyper cannot start the desync attack, as the client will repair the headers before forwarding. This is fixed in versions 0.14.3 and 0.13.10. As a workaround one can take the following options: 1) Reject requests that contain a transfer-encoding header, 2) Ensure any upstream proxy handles transfer-encoding correctly.

CVSS v3:

  • Severity: Low
  • Score: 4.8
  • AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N

CVSS v2:

  • Severity: Medium
  • Score: 6.8
  • AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

CWEs:

Frequently Asked Questions

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.