fix(crawl): stop redirects escaping crawl scope, cap fanout (#333)

* docs(scan): correct crawl's false robots.txt claim

the doc comment said robots.txt is respected because colly honors it
by default, but colly's default is IgnoreRobotsTxt=true and Crawl never
flips it, so Disallow rules were never enforced. state the actual,
intentional behavior instead: a recon crawler has no reason to treat
Disallow as a scope boundary.

pin the behavior with a regression test so it isn't "fixed" into a
partial robots.txt implementation by accident later.

* fix(scan): cap crawl request fanout

MaxDepth only bounds recursion depth; colly's own MaxRequests budget
was left at 0 (unlimited) and Crawl set no Limit rule, so a hostile
page fanning out to an attacker-controlled number of links got every
one of them fetched at that depth (b^d). cap the total number of
requests a single Crawl call will make with a fixed internal budget.

TestCrawl_BoundsRequestFanout proves a 2500-link fanout page no longer
drives the server past maxCrawlRequests+1 actual fetches.

* fix(scan): stop redirects from escaping crawl scope

Crawl called SetClient(httpx.Client(timeout)), which replaces colly's
whole *http.Client and discards the CheckRedirect colly installs to
re-check AllowedDomains on every redirect hop. with it gone, redirects
fell back to net/http's default: follow up to 10 hops to any host. an
in-scope page could 302 the crawler to an arbitrary off-scope host
(e.g. a cloud metadata endpoint) and it would be fetched.

colly's own AllowedDomains only matches on hostname anyway, which
would still let a same-host, different-port redirect through (an
internal service reachable on the same IP). build our own http.Client
on top of httpx's shared transport instead, with a CheckRedirect that
requires the redirect target to share the exact host:port of the
request that produced it, and caps the hop count ourselves since a
custom CheckRedirect drops net/http's own 10-redirect default.

TestCrawl_RedirectRejectsOffScopeHost proves the off-scope host is no
longer fetched; TestCrawl_RedirectFollowsSameHost proves ordinary
same-host redirects still are.
This commit is contained in:
Tigah
2026-07-22 12:53:41 -07:00
committed by GitHub
parent 03b023eba5
commit 788d20c18e
2 changed files with 163 additions and 4 deletions
+31 -4
View File
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ package scan
import (
"fmt"
"net/http"
"net/url"
"sort"
"sync"
@@ -43,9 +44,19 @@ func (r *CrawlResult) ResultType() string { return "crawl" }
// compile-time check so a result-type drift fails the build, not a run.
var _ ScanResult = (*CrawlResult)(nil)
// maxCrawlRequests caps the total pages a single Crawl call will fetch, so a
// hostile page fanning out to an attacker-controlled number of links can't
// turn a bounded-depth crawl into an unbounded one (b^d).
const maxCrawlRequests = 2000
// maxRedirectHops mirrors net/http's own default redirect cap, which we lose
// once we install a custom CheckRedirect below.
const maxRedirectHops = 10
// Crawl spiders the target up to depth, following same-host links/scripts/forms.
// all traffic flows through the shared httpx client so proxy/headers/rate-limit
// apply, and robots.txt is respected (colly honors it by default).
// apply. robots.txt is intentionally NOT honored: this is a recon/pentest
// crawler and Disallow rules are not a scope boundary we want to respect.
func Crawl(targetURL string, depth int, timeout time.Duration, logdir string) (*CrawlResult, error) {
log := output.Module("CRAWL")
log.Start()
@@ -72,10 +83,26 @@ func Crawl(targetURL string, depth int, timeout time.Duration, logdir string) (*
collector := colly.NewCollector(
colly.MaxDepth(depth),
colly.AllowedDomains(host),
colly.MaxRequests(maxCrawlRequests),
)
// reuse the shared client so proxy/cookie/-H/rate-limit are honored and the
// configured timeout applies to every fetch, robots.txt included.
collector.SetClient(httpx.Client(timeout))
// reuse the shared transport so proxy/-H/rate-limit still apply, but scope
// redirects ourselves: colly's CheckRedirect only re-checks AllowedDomains,
// which matches on hostname alone, so a same-host redirect to a different
// port would still be followed. also re-cap the hop count, since installing
// a custom CheckRedirect drops net/http's own 10-redirect default.
collector.SetClient(&http.Client{
Timeout: timeout,
Transport: httpx.Client(timeout).Transport,
CheckRedirect: func(req *http.Request, via []*http.Request) error {
if len(via) >= maxRedirectHops {
return fmt.Errorf("stopped after %d redirects", maxRedirectHops)
}
if req.URL.Host != via[0].URL.Host {
return fmt.Errorf("redirect to %q leaves crawl scope %q", req.URL, via[0].URL.Host)
}
return nil
},
})
// dedupe across the concurrent callbacks colly may fire.
var mu sync.Mutex
+132
View File
@@ -13,8 +13,10 @@
package scan
import (
"fmt"
"net/http"
"net/http/httptest"
"sync/atomic"
"testing"
"time"
)
@@ -156,3 +158,133 @@ func TestCrawl_ResultType(t *testing.T) {
t.Errorf("ResultType = %q, want crawl", r.ResultType())
}
}
// an in-scope page 302-redirecting to a separate host must not be followed:
// colly's own CheckRedirect only re-checks AllowedDomains, which matches on
// hostname alone, so a same-host redirect to a different port (as an
// internal service or metadata endpoint reachable on the same host would be)
// slipped through until Crawl installed its own host:port-strict check.
func TestCrawl_RedirectRejectsOffScopeHost(t *testing.T) {
var offScopeHits int64
offScope := httptest.NewServer(http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, _ *http.Request) {
atomic.AddInt64(&offScopeHits, 1)
_, _ = w.Write([]byte("should never be fetched"))
}))
defer offScope.Close()
mux := http.NewServeMux()
mux.HandleFunc("/robots.txt", func(w http.ResponseWriter, _ *http.Request) {
w.WriteHeader(http.StatusNotFound)
})
mux.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
if r.URL.Path == "/go" {
http.Redirect(w, r, offScope.URL+"/secret", http.StatusFound)
return
}
_, _ = fmt.Fprint(w, `<a href="/go">follow me</a>`)
})
target := httptest.NewServer(mux)
defer target.Close()
if _, err := Crawl(target.URL, 3, 5*time.Second, ""); err != nil {
t.Fatalf("Crawl: %v", err)
}
if got := atomic.LoadInt64(&offScopeHits); got != 0 {
t.Errorf("redirect escaped scope: off-scope host fetched %d time(s)", got)
}
}
// a redirect that stays on the same host:port must still be followed; the
// scope check must not break ordinary same-site redirects (e.g. login
// bounces, trailing-slash normalization).
func TestCrawl_RedirectFollowsSameHost(t *testing.T) {
mux := http.NewServeMux()
mux.HandleFunc("/robots.txt", func(w http.ResponseWriter, _ *http.Request) {
w.WriteHeader(http.StatusNotFound)
})
mux.HandleFunc("/go", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
http.Redirect(w, r, "/landed", http.StatusFound)
})
mux.HandleFunc("/landed", func(w http.ResponseWriter, _ *http.Request) {
_, _ = w.Write([]byte(`leaf`))
})
mux.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
_, _ = fmt.Fprint(w, `<a href="/go">follow me</a>`)
})
target := httptest.NewServer(mux)
defer target.Close()
result, err := Crawl(target.URL, 3, 5*time.Second, "")
if err != nil {
t.Fatalf("Crawl: %v", err)
}
if !urlsContain(result.URLs, target.URL+"/go") {
t.Errorf("expected same-host redirect source /go to be recorded, got %v", result.URLs)
}
}
// a hostile page fanning out to far more links than any real page would must
// not turn a bounded-depth crawl into an unbounded one. child pages are
// leaves with no links of their own, so this exercises maxCrawlRequests
// rather than the (unbounded, by design) link count off a single page.
func TestCrawl_BoundsRequestFanout(t *testing.T) {
fanout := maxCrawlRequests + 500
var hits int64
mux := http.NewServeMux()
mux.HandleFunc("/robots.txt", func(w http.ResponseWriter, _ *http.Request) {
w.WriteHeader(http.StatusNotFound)
})
mux.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
atomic.AddInt64(&hits, 1)
if r.URL.Path != "/" {
_, _ = w.Write([]byte("leaf"))
return
}
for i := 0; i < fanout; i++ {
_, _ = fmt.Fprintf(w, `<a href="/p/%d">l</a>`, i)
}
})
target := httptest.NewServer(mux)
defer target.Close()
if _, err := Crawl(target.URL, 1, 30*time.Second, ""); err != nil {
t.Fatalf("Crawl: %v", err)
}
// +1 for the root page itself; the rest must be capped at maxCrawlRequests.
if got, want := atomic.LoadInt64(&hits), int64(maxCrawlRequests+1); got > want {
t.Errorf("expected at most %d requests (request cap), server received %d", want, got)
}
}
// robots.txt is intentionally NOT honored: sif is a recon/pentest crawler and
// Disallow rules are not a scope boundary it should respect. This pins the
// intentional behavior so it isn't "fixed" into a partial robots.txt
// implementation by accident later.
func TestCrawl_DoesNotHonorRobots(t *testing.T) {
var secretHits int64
mux := http.NewServeMux()
mux.HandleFunc("/robots.txt", func(w http.ResponseWriter, _ *http.Request) {
_, _ = w.Write([]byte("User-agent: *\nDisallow: /\n"))
})
mux.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
if r.URL.Path == "/secret" {
atomic.AddInt64(&secretHits, 1)
_, _ = w.Write([]byte("leaf"))
return
}
_, _ = fmt.Fprint(w, `<a href="/secret">s</a>`)
})
target := httptest.NewServer(mux)
defer target.Close()
if _, err := Crawl(target.URL, 2, 5*time.Second, ""); err != nil {
t.Fatalf("Crawl: %v", err)
}
if got := atomic.LoadInt64(&secretHits); got == 0 {
t.Errorf("expected Disallow:/ path to be fetched (robots.txt is not honored), got %d hits", got)
}
}