fix: check the server response size, should not be over 512kB

[pimeys]

The server can be any arbitrary web push server. We should have control what is the response size due to allocating a vector based on this value.

[niklasf]

Hi. This is not quite enough. The server could still send a response stream without Content-Length header. Self-contained example:

Cargo.toml

[package]
name = "max-content-length-repro"
edition = "2021"
publish = false

[dependencies]
axum = "0.7.9"
axum-streams = { version = "0.19.0", features = ["text"] }
futures-lite = "2.5.0"
isahc = "1.7.2"
tokio = { version = "1.42.0", features = ["full"] }

src/main.rs

use std::error::Error;

use axum::{response::IntoResponse, routing::get, Router};
use axum_streams::StreamBodyAs;
use futures_lite::AsyncReadExt;
use isahc::{http::header::CONTENT_LENGTH, HttpClient};
use tokio::{net::TcpListener, task};

async fn infinite_stream() -> impl IntoResponse {
    StreamBodyAs::text(futures_lite::stream::repeat(
        "lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consecutor".into(),
    ))
}

async fn evil_server(listener: TcpListener) {
    let app = Router::new().route("/", get(infinite_stream));
    axum::serve(listener, app).await.unwrap();
}

const MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH: usize = 512_000;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> {
    // Start evil server
    task::spawn(evil_server(
        tokio::net::TcpListener::bind("127.0.0.1:8000")
            .await
            .unwrap(),
    ));

    // Make a request to the server. With the implementation below,
    // this will try to read the infinite response until the end,
    // consuming more and more memory.
    let client = HttpClient::new()?;
    let res = client.get_async("http://127.0.0.1:8000/").await?;

    let content_size = res
        .headers()
        .get(CONTENT_LENGTH)
        .and_then(|s| s.to_str().ok())
        .and_then(|s| s.parse().ok())
        .unwrap_or(0);

    if content_size > MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH {
        println!("not exploitable: rejected large content size");
        return Ok(());
    }

    let mut body = Vec::with_capacity(content_size);
    let mut chunks = res.into_body();

    chunks.read_to_end(&mut body).await?;

    assert!(
        body.len() <= MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH,
        "exploitable: body size {} too large",
        body.len()
    );

    Ok(())
}

[niklasf]

https://docs.rs/http-body-util/latest/http_body_util/struct.Limited.html looks interesting, for a robust solution.

[niklasf]

Attempt that handles this case: #68.