WebOb provides objects for HTTP requests and responses. Prior to 1.8.10, the normalization of the HTTP Location header during a redirect is vulnerable to an open redirect: WebOb joins the redirect target to the request URI using Python's urljoin, and since Python 3.10 the underlying urlsplit strips ASCII tab, carriage return, and newline characters before parsing, so a redirect target containing such characters can be reinterpreted as a protocol-relative URL whose authority is an attacker-controlled host. This bypasses the CVE-2024-42353 fix that escaped a leading double slash, allowing an attacker who influences the redirect location to send users to an arbitrary external site instead of the intended one. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.8.10.
WebOb: Location header normalization during redirect leads to open redirect
Problem type
Affected products
Pylons
< 1.8.10 - AFFECTED
References
GitHub Security Advisories
GHSA-fh3h-vg37-cc95
WebOb: Location header normalization during redirect leads to open redirect - again
https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-fh3h-vg37-cc95Impact
When WebOb normalizes the HTTP Location header to include the request hostname, it does so by parsing the URL that the user is to be redirected to with Python's urllib.parse, and joining it to the base URL. urlsplit (called internally by urljoin) however treats a // at the start of a string as a URI without a scheme, and then treats the next part as the hostname. urljoin will then use that hostname from the second part as the hostname replacing the original one from the request.
In a previous advisory https://github.com/Pylons/webob/security/advisories/GHSA-mg3v-6m49-jhp3 an attempt to fix this was made by forcing the replacement of // with /%2f, however this did not take into account that since Python 3.10 urlsplit internally strips ASCII tab, carriage return, and newline characters from the string, so /\t/attacker.com gets turned into //attacker.com and the attacker is able to bypass the changes introduced in that previous advisory, thereby bringing back the problem that was attempted to be fixed.
>>> parse.urlparse("//attacker.com/some/path")
ParseResult(scheme='', netloc='attacker.com', path='/some/path', params='', query='', fragment='')
WebOb uses urljoin to take the request URI and join the redirect location to it, so assuming the request URI is https://example.org/ and the URL to redirect to is /\t/attacker.com/some/path/:
>>> parse.urljoin("https://example.org/", "/\t/attacker.com/some/path/")
'https://attacker.com/some/path/'
Which redirects from example.org where we want the user to stay to attacker.com.
Patches
This issue has been fixed in WebOb 1.8.10.
Workarounds
Any use of the Response class that includes a location can be rewritten to make sure to always pass a full URI that includes the hostname to redirect the user to, or to validate that the redirect target starts with a scheme (e.g. http:// or https://) before assigning to Response.location.
References
Thanks
- Caleb Brown of Google
https://github.com/Pylons/webob/security/advisories/GHSA-fh3h-vg37-cc95
https://github.com/Pylons/webob/security/advisories/GHSA-mg3v-6m49-jhp3
https://github.com/Pylons/webob/commit/1f681a4f17fc10777ef861e8b43ecb26053bc539
https://github.com/Pylons/webob/commit/2b9fbedafb31180c910cf8526e9ea72b4603d0bc
https://github.com/Pylons/webob/releases/tag/1.8.10
https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-fh3h-vg37-cc95
JSON source
https://cveawg.mitre.org/api/cve/CVE-2026-44889Click to expand
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"assignerShortName": "GitHub_M",
"dateUpdated": "2026-06-22T21:30:11.789Z",
"dateReserved": "2026-05-07T21:50:33.545Z",
"datePublished": "2026-06-22T21:30:11.789Z",
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},
"title": "WebOb: Location header normalization during redirect leads to open redirect",
"descriptions": [
{
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"value": "WebOb provides objects for HTTP requests and responses. Prior to 1.8.10, the normalization of the HTTP Location header during a redirect is vulnerable to an open redirect: WebOb joins the redirect target to the request URI using Python's urljoin, and since Python 3.10 the underlying urlsplit strips ASCII tab, carriage return, and newline characters before parsing, so a redirect target containing such characters can be reinterpreted as a protocol-relative URL whose authority is an attacker-controlled host. This bypasses the CVE-2024-42353 fix that escaped a leading double slash, allowing an attacker who influences the redirect location to send users to an arbitrary external site instead of the intended one. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.8.10."
}
],
"affected": [
{
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"product": "webob",
"versions": [
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"status": "affected"
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"vectorString": "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N",
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