GHSA-2p2x-hpg8-cqp2
Litestar's CORS origin allowlist has a bypass due to unescaped regex metacharacters in allowed origins
Details
### Summary CORS origin validation can be bypassed because the allowed-origins allowlist is compiled into a regex without escaping metacharacters (notably .). An allowed origin like https://good.example can match https://goodXexample, resulting in Access-Control-Allow-Origin being set for an untrusted origin
### Details CORSConfig.allowed_origins_regex is constructed using a regex built from configured allowlist values and used with fullmatch() for validation. Because metacharacters are not escaped, a malicious origin can match unexpectedly. The check relies on allowed_origins_regex.fullmatch(origin).
### PoC Server (poc_cors_server.py)
``` from litestar import Litestar, get from litestar.config.cors import CORSConfig
@get("/c") async def c() -> str: return "ok"
cors = CORSConfig( allow_origins=["https://good.example"], allow_credentials=True, ) app = Litestar([c], cors_config=cors) ```
`uvicorn poc_cors_server:app --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8002`
Client (poc_cors_client.py)
``` import http.client
def req(origin: str) -> tuple[int, str | None]: c = http.client.HTTPConnection("127.0.0.1", 8002, timeout=3) c.request("GET", "/c", headers={"Origin": origin, "Host": "example.com"}) r = c.getresponse() r.read() acao = r.getheader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin") c.close() return r.status, acao
print("evil:", req("https://evil.example")) print("bypass:", req("https://goodXexample")) ```
Expected (vulnerable behavior):
Origin: https://evil.example → no ACAO Origin: https://goodXexample → ACAO: https://goodxexample/ (bypass)
### Impact Type: CORS policy bypass (cross-origin data exposure risk) Who is impacted: apps using CORS allowlists to restrict browser cross-origin reads. If allow_credentials=True and authenticated endpoints return sensitive data, an attacker-controlled site can potentially read responses in a victim’s browser session.
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Affected packages
References
- https://github.com/litestar-org/litestar/security/advisories/GHSA-2p2x-hpg8-cqp2 [WEB]
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-25478 [ADVISORY]
- https://github.com/litestar-org/litestar/commit/eb87703b309efcc0d1b087dcb12784e76b003d5a [WEB]
- https://docs.litestar.dev/2/release-notes/changelog.html#2.20.0 [WEB]
- https://github.com/litestar-org/litestar [PACKAGE]
- https://github.com/litestar-org/litestar/releases/tag/v2.20.0 [WEB]