#19113 [NEW]: HTTP status 200 returned on HTTP CONNECT when mod_proxy not in use

From: php@jdc.parodius.com Operating system: FreeBSD 4.6.2 PHP version: 4.2.2 PHP Bug Type: Apache related Bug description: HTTP status 200 returned on HTTP CONNECT when mod_proxy not in use I believe the following to be a severe bug which relates directly to PHP4 and Apache 1.3: For those of you unfamiliar with HTTP, there is an HTTP command called "CONNECT" which is intended for use with HTTP proxying. Via telnet, one can test for proxy capability by doing the following (input is in bold): $ telnet www.somehost.com 80 Trying ###.###.###.###... Connected to www.somehost.com. Escape character is '^]'. CONNECT www.google.com:80 HTTP/1.0 Host: www.somehost.com Now hit [Enter] twice. If your Apache configuration is proper (and without mod_proxy installed), you should get the following response: HTTP/1.1 405 Method Not Allowed However, this is where the bug shows up. Here are the pre-requisites for it to appear: Must have PHP4 module loaded. Must have index.php listed in Apache DocumentIndex directive. Must have index.php file in the DocumentRoot of the website you're connecting to (in the above example, www.somehost.com). The result of the above HTTP CONNECT when all of the above pre-requistes are met: HTTP/1.1 200 OK [HTTP headers here] [Contents of parsed index.php here; as if visiting the website!] An HTTP response code of 200 should only be sent when the request was legitimate -- a HTTP CONNECT should not be legitimate just because the website in question has an index.php file. You can literally rename index.php to something else (even index.html!) and a correct HTTP status of 405 is returned. I have read the HTTP RFC in full, and it is fairly vague when it comes to dealing with HTTP CONNECT -- however, the Status code section applies to all sections, therefore a Status code of 200 on an HTTP CONNECT when mod_proxy is not loaded is incorrect. Again, this only happens with mod_php4 installed. So why is this a big deal? Well, a slew of online services use proxy scanners to ensure legitimate clients are being used to communicate with their servers; proxy scanners are also used for IRC. The scanners look for a status code of 200 on an HTTP CONNECT. There is a workaround, which is to add the following to your server configuration: <Location /> <Limit CONNECT> Order deny,allow Deny from all </Limit> </Location> This bug may be directly related to bug #17424. Footnote: If this is traced back to be a flaw in Apache's DSO code, then I expect to see it reported as such, so I can forward this entire thread on to the Apache team and make them deal with it. Thanks. -- Edit bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=19113&edit=1 -- Try a CVS snapshot: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=19113&r=trysnapshot Fixed in CVS: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=19113&r=fixedcvs Fixed in release: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=19113&r=alreadyfixed Need backtrace: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=19113&r=needtrace Try newer version: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=19113&r=oldversion Not developer issue: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=19113&r=support Expected behavior: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=19113&r=notwrong Not enough info: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=19113&r=notenoughinfo Submitted twice: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=19113&r=submittedtwice register_globals: http://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=19113&r=globals