GHSA-hx53-jchx-cr52: Symfony2 improper IP based access control

Damien Tournoud, from the Drupal security team, contacted us two days ago about a security issue in the Request::getClientIp() method when the trust proxy mode is enabled (Request::trustProxyData()).

An application is vulnerable if it uses the client IP address as returned by the Request::getClientIp() method for sensitive decisions like IP based access control.

To fix this security issue, the following changes have been made to all versions of Symfony2:

A new Request::setTrustedProxies() method has been introduced and should be used intead of Request::trustProxyData() to enable the trust proxy mode. It takes an array of trusted proxy IP addresses as its argument:

// before (probably in your front controller script)
Request::trustProxyData();


// after
Request::setTrustedProxies(array('1.1.1.1'));
// 1.1.1.1 being the IP address of a trusted reverse proxy

The Request::trustProxyData() method has been deprecated (when used, it automatically trusts the latest proxy in the chain – which is the current remote address):

Request::trustProxyData();


// is equivalent to
Request::setTrustedProxies(array($request->server->get('REMOTE_ADDR')));

We encourage all Symfony2 users to upgrade as soon as possible. It you don’t want to upgrade to the latest version yet, you can also apply the following patches:

Patch for Symfony 2.0.19
Patch for Symfony 2.1.4

References

• symfony/symfony@922c201
• symfony/symfony@9ce892c
• https://github.com/FriendsOfPHP/security-advisories/blob/master/symfony/symfony/2012-11-29.yaml
• https://symfony.com/blog/security-release-symfony-2-0-19-and-2-1-4