fix(web): refuse cross-site state-changing requests (Origin/Referer check) (#674)

The web interface refuses state-changing requests (POST/PUT/PATCH/DELETE)
whose Origin (or, without one, Referer) is not the host they were sent to,
or is null: 403 CROSS_SITE_REQUEST (web_interface/origin_guard.py). Any
website a LAN user visited could otherwise make their browser POST a plain
form to the Pi. /api/v3/system/action also refuses form-encoded and
text/plain bodies (415) unless sent by HTMX. Clients that send no Origin or
Referer (curl, requests, Home Assistant, the MQTT bridge) are unaffected.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Chuck
2026-09-30 09:02:01 -04:00
committed by GitHub
co-authored by Claude Opus 5.5
parent c3a7a110c4
commit ba38a83c2c
8 changed files with 565 additions and 10 deletions
+24
View File
@@ -19,6 +19,30 @@ accepts both, but the store flags the old spelling as deprecated
## Unreleased
### Security
- The web interface refuses state-changing requests (`POST`, `PUT`, `PATCH`,
`DELETE`) sent by another website's page. Any site a LAN user visited could
make their browser submit a plain HTML form to `http://<pi>:5000` -- CORS
does not stop such a request, only hides its answer -- and
`/api/v3/system/action` accepted form bodies, so that page could reboot or
power off the Pi, pull code, or reach any other mutating route. A request
whose `Origin` (or, without one, `Referer`) is not the host it was sent to,
or is `null`, now gets 403 `CROSS_SITE_REQUEST`
(`web_interface/origin_guard.py`). `/api/v3/system/action` also refuses a
form-encoded or `text/plain` body (415) unless it carries HTMX's
`HX-Request` header; every caller in the interface already sends JSON.
- **Behaviour change for API scripts:** clients that send no `Origin` or
`Referer` -- curl, Python `requests`, Home Assistant, the MQTT bridge --
are unaffected. A browser page served from a *different* origin (a
dashboard or userscript on another host) can no longer call the mutating
API; call it server-side instead. Anyone posting a form body to
`system/action` must switch to JSON. Behind a reverse proxy, forward the
original `Host`, port included (`proxy_set_header Host $http_host;`;
nginx's `$host` drops the port); `X-Forwarded-Host` is not trusted. A
TLS-terminating proxy needs nothing more: a portless `Host` matches an
`https://` page.
### Fixes
- On-demand no longer restarts a running display. `POST