Pingora versions prior to 0.9.0 passed the downstream request through `upstream_request_filter` and wrote it to HTTP/1 upstreams without removing the client's Connection header, other hop-by-hop headers, or the headers Connection nominated, although RFC 9110 Section 7.6.1 requires intermediaries to remove them. The HTTP/2 upstream path already removed Connection and related HTTP/1-specific headers. A client could therefore nominate a header that the application adds in `upstream_request_filter` (for example, `Connection: keep-alive, X-Forwarded-For`). A downstream HTTP/1 intermediary that honors Connection would then strip the Pingora-added header before it reached the origin.
This specifically affects chained deployments where an HTTP/1 intermediary between Pingora and the origin processes Connection nominations (for example, Go's `net/http/httputil.ReverseProxy`) and the origin trusts headers added by that intermediary (for example, X-Forwarded-For for IP-based authorization). A remote, unauthenticated attacker can have those headers removed, potentially bypassing authorization. This is the same class of issue as CVE-2022-31813 in Apache HTTP Server.
This flaw was corrected in commits 28c18e6b6b04dd0bd937234e5950049e6d74cded and ca23f1668eca8e78be7ba62ef0edbd458b40eeee. By default, Pingora now removes hop-by-hop and Connection-nominated headers from upstream requests, and rejects requests whose Connection header nominates Host, X-Forwarded-For, X-Forwarded-Host, X-Forwarded-Proto, or a pseudo-header. This is controlled by `PeerOptions::http_upstream_request_policy`; `HttpUpstreamRequestPolicy::preserve()` restores the old passthrough behavior and should not be used if the origin relies on headers added by Pingora. Users should upgrade to Pingora >= 0.9.0.
Note: Cloudflare CDN customers were unaffected, as no such chained deployment as described above exists with internal Pingora services, and Connection headers are sanitized before arriving at Pingora gateways.