Summary
AstronRPA through version 1.1.6 contains an authentication bypass in the OpenResty gateway because Bearer tokens are accepted without meaningful validation. An unauthenticated attacker may reach protected API routes and potentially impersonate users by supplying spoofed identity headers.
AstronRPA through version 1.1.6 contains an authentication bypass in the OpenResty gateway because Bearer tokens are accepted without meaningful validation. An unauthenticated attacker may reach protected API routes and potentially impersonate users by supplying spoofed identity headers.
Affected context
The issue occurs in deployments that use AstronRPA's OpenResty gateway and its
auth_handler.lua authentication flow. Risk is present when protected routes
such as /api/resource/ or /api/rpa-ai-service/ rely on the gateway to
validate Bearer credentials and trust user identity values supplied through
request headers.
The issue occurs in deployments that use AstronRPA's OpenResty gateway and its
auth_handler.lua authentication flow. Risk is present when protected routes
such as /api/resource/ or /api/rpa-ai-service/ rely on the gateway to
validate Bearer credentials and trust user identity values supplied through
request headers.
Exploit preconditions
- Attack surface: HTTP API endpoints exposed through the OpenResty gateway
- Required access: No valid account or authenticated session is necessarily required
- Trigger point: Processing a request containing a Bearer authorization value
- Why exploitation is possible: The gateway accepts arbitrary Bearer values without validating them and may rely on attacker-controlled user identity headers
- Attack surface: HTTP API endpoints exposed through the OpenResty gateway
- Required access: No valid account or authenticated session is necessarily required
- Trigger point: Processing a request containing a Bearer authorization value
- Why exploitation is possible: The gateway accepts arbitrary Bearer values without validating them and may rely on attacker-controlled user identity headers
Why this happens
The underlying bug is an authentication validation failure mapped to
CWE-287: Improper Authentication. The gateway treats the presence of a
Bearer token as sufficient evidence of identity instead of verifying its
authenticity, integrity, expiration, and relationship to the requested user.
Trusting client-controlled X-User-Id or user_id values further weakens the
identity boundary.
The underlying bug is an authentication validation failure mapped to
CWE-287: Improper Authentication. The gateway treats the presence of a
Bearer token as sufficient evidence of identity instead of verifying its
authenticity, integrity, expiration, and relationship to the requested user.
Trusting client-controlled X-User-Id or user_id values further weakens the
identity boundary.
Potential impact
- Unauthenticated users may access protected API functionality
- Attackers could impersonate other users
- Unauthorized actions may be performed through resource or AI-service routes
- Sensitive data may be accessed or modified
- Activity records and audit attribution could be manipulated
- Unauthenticated users may access protected API functionality
- Attackers could impersonate other users
- Unauthorized actions may be performed through resource or AI-service routes
- Sensitive data may be accessed or modified
- Activity records and audit attribution could be manipulated
General mitigation guidance
Mitigation generally focuses on enforcing authentication at a trusted boundary
and ensuring that identity attributes are derived from validated credentials.
Common defensive patterns include:
- Validate Bearer tokens using a trusted issuer, signature, audience, and lifetime
- Reject missing, malformed, expired, revoked, or otherwise invalid credentials
- Derive user identity server-side rather than trusting client-supplied identity headers
- Apply authorization checks independently at each protected route
- Use secure-by-default gateway rules that deny access unless authentication succeeds
- Minimize gateway and service privileges and limit the actions available to unauthenticated requests
- Protect authentication configuration and apply policy checks consistently across deployment environments
Mitigation generally focuses on enforcing authentication at a trusted boundary
and ensuring that identity attributes are derived from validated credentials.
Common defensive patterns include:
- Validate Bearer tokens using a trusted issuer, signature, audience, and lifetime
- Reject missing, malformed, expired, revoked, or otherwise invalid credentials
- Derive user identity server-side rather than trusting client-supplied identity headers
- Apply authorization checks independently at each protected route
- Use secure-by-default gateway rules that deny access unless authentication succeeds
- Minimize gateway and service privileges and limit the actions available to unauthenticated requests
- Protect authentication configuration and apply policy checks consistently across deployment environments
How teams detect issues like this
Detection approaches may include:
- Static analysis and code review checks for authentication handlers that accept token presence without verification
- Searches for request handlers that trust
X-User-Id,user_id, or similar client-controlled identity fields - API tests that verify invalid, expired, absent, and structurally malformed tokens are rejected
- Gateway policy reviews confirming that protected routes default to denial
- Monitoring for successful access to protected routes without a corresponding validated identity
- Alerts for unusual identity changes, repeated token failures, or access patterns inconsistent with normal users
Detection approaches may include:
- Static analysis and code review checks for authentication handlers that accept token presence without verification
- Searches for request handlers that trust
X-User-Id,user_id, or similar client-controlled identity fields - API tests that verify invalid, expired, absent, and structurally malformed tokens are rejected
- Gateway policy reviews confirming that protected routes default to denial
- Monitoring for successful access to protected routes without a corresponding validated identity
- Alerts for unusual identity changes, repeated token failures, or access patterns inconsistent with normal users
