Collected research

Practical HTTP Host Header Attacks

Practical HTTP Host header attacks

James Kettle · skeletonscribe.net

Applications build absolute URLs from the attacker-controlled HTTP Host header. Poisoning it redirects password-reset links to the attacker (Gallery, Django, Piwik, Joomla), while duplicate Host headers or an absolute request URI split what the cache sees from what the application sees, poisoning Varnish and Joomla. Django's port and blacklist patches are each bypassed.

Record

Document

Practical HTTP Host header attacks

Researcher

James Kettle

Published by

skeletonscribe.net

Topic

HTTP

In the archive

• Collected in the 2013 research round

Related sources

• ActiveScan++
• ActiveScan++: Augmenting manual testing with attack proxy plugins
• ActiveScan++: Augmenting manual testing with attack proxy plugins (Slides) Slides

Tags

• cache-poisoning
• header-injection
• http
• django
• joomla
• xss
• email
• mitigation
• reverse-proxy
• owasp-a03-2021

This page is the archive's own catalogue record. The research is the work of James Kettle, first published at the original source. Preserved copies are kept so the citation survives its host; this one was last captured on 9 August 2026.