Files
certctl/internal/validation/headers.go
T
shankar0123 23c593089d security(email): sanitize body fields against content injection (CodeQL #11, CWE-640)
CodeQL alert #11 (go/email-injection, CWE-640 / OWASP Content Spoofing)
flagged the wc.Write(message) sink at internal/connector/notifier/email/
email.go:208 because attacker-controllable fields flow into the email
body unchecked.

Threat model:
  Headers (From, To, Subject) were already protected by
  validation.ValidateHeaderValue (CWE-113 SMTP header injection,
  closed in commit 3853b74). The remaining gap was the body.
  An attacker controls multiple fields that surface to the body of
  alert/event notifications:
    - alert.Subject, alert.Message
    - event.Subject, event.Body, *event.CertificateID
    - alert.Metadata + event.Metadata key/value pairs
  These can carry CR/LF (forged 'Reply-To: attacker@evil.com' inside
  the body that recipients skim), NUL bytes (RFC 5321 4.5.2 violation
  that some MTAs truncate at), bidi-override Unicode (visually-
  spoofable URLs), zero-width / invisible Unicode (phishing), or
  malformed UTF-8 (Go emits U+FFFD which becomes a glyph in mail
  clients).

  The HTML email path (digest service) already uses html/template
  upstream and is safe via contextual auto-escape. This commit
  closes the plaintext path.

Fix:
  internal/validation/headers.go gains SanitizeEmailBodyValue —
  a sanitizer that NEVER errors (the right contract for body
  content; over-eager rejection drops operator notifications) and
  scrubs:
    - NUL bytes (stripped entirely)
    - bare CR / LF (replaced with space — single fields should never
      carry their own line breaks; the surrounding template handles
      legitimate CRLFs)
    - C0 control chars < 0x20 except TAB
    - DEL (0x7F) + C1 control chars (0x80-0x9F)
    - U+FFFD (defense in depth: malformed UTF-8 -> Go emits this;
      strip so attacker-planted invalid bytes don't survive as an
      arbitrary glyph)
    - Bidi-override Unicode (U+202A..U+202E, U+2066..U+2069)
    - Zero-width / invisible Unicode (U+200B..U+200D, U+2060..U+2063,
      U+FEFF, U+180E)
    - Catch-all unicode.IsControl for anything not enumerated above
  Codepoint table uses numeric ranges rather than rune-literal switch
  cases — Go source rejects literal invisible characters (BOM U+FEFF)
  mid-file, so the table compares against numeric values.

  internal/connector/notifier/email/email.go applies the sanitizer
  at every interpolation site:
    - formatAlertBody: alert.ID/Type/Severity/Subject/Message
      (CreatedAt is time.Time -> RFC3339, structural, not sanitized)
    - formatEventBody: event.ID/Type/Subject/Body, *CertificateID
      (CreatedAt structural, not sanitized)
    - formatMetadata: both keys and values
  The sendEmail / formatEmailMessage call sites continue to validate
  headers (From / To / Subject) via the existing ValidateHeaderValue
  fail-closed gate; the new sanitizer is body-side only.

Tests (internal/validation/headers_test.go):
  TestSanitizeEmailBodyValue_PreservesSafeInput
    Pin: ordinary ASCII, UTF-8 multibyte (résumé / 日本語 / مرحبا),
    tabs, common cert DNs, URLs all flow through unchanged.
  TestSanitizeEmailBodyValue_StripsControlChars
    Table-driven across NUL, bare LF/CR, CRLF, BEL, backspace, DEL,
    C1 (U+0080 / U+009F), U+FFFD, TAB-preserve.
  TestSanitizeEmailBodyValue_StripsBidiOverride
    7 attacker payloads (RLO, LRO, LRI, zero-width space, ZWNJ, BOM,
    MVS) — each must produce a non-identity output.
  TestSanitizeEmailBodyValue_ContentSpoofingScenario
    The CodeQL example case: 'alert\r\nReply-To: attacker@evil.com\r\n
    Click https://evil.example.com/reset' — verify NO CR/LF survives.

Verified locally:
  gofmt: clean.
  go vet ./...: exit 0.
  go test -short -count=1 ./internal/validation/...: ok 0.374s
  go test -short -count=1 ./internal/connector/notifier/email/...: ok 0.186s

Reference: https://github.com/certctl-io/certctl/security/code-scanning/11
Closes CodeQL alert #11 (go/email-injection).
2026-05-04 04:56:13 +00:00

160 lines
6.1 KiB
Go

package validation
import (
"fmt"
"strings"
"unicode"
)
// ValidateHeaderValue rejects any value that contains characters capable of
// breaking out of a header line and injecting additional headers or body
// content. It guards against CRLF injection (CWE-113) in RFC 5322 message
// headers (SMTP, IMAP, etc.) and RFC 7230 HTTP headers alike.
//
// Disallowed characters:
// - Carriage return ("\r")
// - Line feed ("\n")
// - NUL ("\x00")
//
// The field name is included in the returned error solely for operator
// diagnostics; the offending value is not echoed back, so untrusted input
// does not leak into logs that render this error.
//
// Callers should invoke this on any string that will be interpolated into a
// header (From, To, Subject, Reply-To, custom X-* headers, etc.) before the
// headers are serialized. Values containing CR/LF/NUL MUST be rejected
// outright; silent stripping is inappropriate for authentication-relevant
// headers because it can mask malicious intent while still altering the
// message.
func ValidateHeaderValue(field, value string) error {
if field == "" {
field = "header"
}
if strings.ContainsAny(value, "\r\n\x00") {
return fmt.Errorf("%s contains disallowed control character (CR, LF, or NUL)", field)
}
return nil
}
// SanitizeEmailBodyValue scrubs control characters and visually-spoofable
// Unicode from a single field that will be interpolated into a plaintext
// email body. Closes CodeQL go/email-injection (CWE-640 / OWASP Content
// Spoofing): an attacker who controls a field surfaced to an
// operator-bound notification (cert subject DN, discovered cert metadata,
// alert subject / message, event subject / body, metadata key+value
// pairs) could otherwise plant content that:
//
// - Forges header-like content using bare CR/LF (some mail relays
// misinterpret bare LF mid-body as a header boundary; RFC 5321
// mandates CRLF, but defense in depth says strip bare LFs).
// - Embeds NUL bytes (forbidden by RFC 5321 sec 4.5.2; some MTAs
// truncate at NUL, allowing content elision).
// - Plants bidi-override Unicode (U+202A..U+202E, U+2066..U+2069) so a
// malicious URL renders as a benign one in the recipient's mail
// client.
// - Plants zero-width / invisible Unicode (U+200B..U+200D, U+FEFF,
// U+2060..U+2063) so a phishing-prone URL hides whitespace.
// - Plants C0 / C1 control characters that mail clients may render
// unpredictably or strip in surprising ways.
//
// The sanitizer NEVER errors; it always returns a sanitized string. This
// is the right contract for body content (vs. headers, which fail loud)
// because dropping a notification because the cert subject DN happens to
// contain a Mongolian Vowel Separator would be worse than escaping it.
//
// What the sanitizer does:
//
// - Strip NUL bytes (\x00) entirely.
// - Replace bare LF / CR with a single space. Multi-line legitimate
// body content gets its CRLF formatting from the email serializer
// above this layer; a SINGLE FIELD interpolated into the body
// should never carry its own line breaks.
// - Strip bidi-override and zero-width characters.
// - Strip C0 control chars (< 0x20) except TAB. Strip DEL (0x7F) +
// C1 control chars (0x80-0x9F).
// - Leave ordinary printable Unicode (including non-Latin scripts)
// intact.
//
// Apply this to EVERY user-controllable field before interpolating into
// a plaintext email body. Do NOT apply it to operator-controlled
// constants (template literals, severity tier names) — those don't
// carry the threat. The HTML email path uses html/template upstream
// and does not need this sanitizer (html/template's contextual
// auto-escape handles the same threats for HTML rendering).
func SanitizeEmailBodyValue(value string) string {
if value == "" {
return value
}
var b strings.Builder
b.Grow(len(value))
for _, r := range value {
switch {
case r == 0:
// NUL — strip entirely (RFC 5321 sec 4.5.2 violation).
continue
case r == '\r' || r == '\n':
// Strip line breaks within a single interpolated field.
b.WriteRune(' ')
case r == '\t':
// TAB is legitimate body content.
b.WriteRune(r)
case r < 0x20:
// C0 control chars (except TAB above) — strip.
continue
case r >= 0x7F && r <= 0x9F:
// DEL + C1 control chars — strip.
continue
case r == 0xFFFD:
// Replacement character — Go's range emits this for any
// malformed UTF-8 byte sequence. Defense in depth: an
// attacker who plants invalid UTF-8 (e.g. raw 0x80..0xFF
// without a valid lead byte) should not have their input
// surface as an arbitrary glyph in operator-bound mail.
continue
case isBidiOrZeroWidth(r):
// Bidi-override + zero-width — strip; visually spoofable.
continue
case unicode.IsControl(r):
// Catch-all: any remaining Unicode control class.
continue
default:
b.WriteRune(r)
}
}
return b.String()
}
// isBidiOrZeroWidth reports whether r is one of the bidi-override or
// zero-width Unicode codepoints used in homograph / direction-spoofing
// attacks. Mirrors the validator in internal/connector/issuer/local
// (validateCSRUnicode); kept inline here to avoid a new import edge
// from internal/validation back to the local issuer package.
//
// Codepoints expressed as numeric ranges instead of rune-literal
// switch cases — Go source rejects literal invisible characters
// (e.g. BOM U+FEFF) mid-file, so we compare against numeric values.
func isBidiOrZeroWidth(r rune) bool {
switch {
// LRE U+202A, RLE U+202B, PDF U+202C, LRO U+202D, RLO U+202E
case r >= 0x202A && r <= 0x202E:
return true
// LRI U+2066, RLI U+2067, FSI U+2068, PDI U+2069
case r >= 0x2066 && r <= 0x2069:
return true
// Zero-width space U+200B, ZWNJ U+200C, ZWJ U+200D
case r >= 0x200B && r <= 0x200D:
return true
// Word joiner U+2060, invisible separator U+2061,
// invisible times U+2062, invisible plus U+2063
case r >= 0x2060 && r <= 0x2063:
return true
// Byte-order mark / zero-width no-break space U+FEFF
case r == 0xFEFF:
return true
// Mongolian Vowel Separator U+180E
case r == 0x180E:
return true
}
return false
}