auth path whitelisting

[akshaydeo]

Summary

Fixes an authentication bypass vulnerability where percent-encoded path traversal sequences (e.g. ..%2F) could be used to reach protected API endpoints without authentication. Because fasthttp/router dispatches routes using the raw, still-encoded PathOriginal(), a request like /api/providers/..%2Fskills%2Fserve%2Fmalicious is matched by the router as a single opaque segment against the protected /api/providers/{provider} route. However, the previous whitelist check used ctx.Path(), which decodes and normalizes the path first — making the same request appear to be the whitelisted /api/skills/serve/malicious prefix, allowing it to sail through unauthenticated.

Changes

• The auth middleware whitelist check now uses ctx.Request.URI().PathOriginal() (the raw, percent-encoded path) instead of ctx.Path() (the decoded, dot-segment-collapsed path), keeping the auth decision congruent with how the router dispatches the request.
• Added a regression test (TestAuthMiddleware_EncodedTraversalDoesNotBypassAuth) covering the exact PoC traversal pattern, variations with different whitelisted prefixes, doubly-encoded dot segments, and a sanity check confirming that legitimate unencoded whitelisted routes still bypass auth correctly.

Type of change

• Bug fix
• Feature
• Refactor
• Documentation
• Chore/CI

Affected areas

• Core (Go)
• Transports (HTTP)
• Providers/Integrations
• Plugins
• UI (React)
• Docs

How to test

go test ./transports/bifrost-http/handlers/... -run TestAuthMiddleware_EncodedTraversalDoesNotBypassAuth -v
go test ./transports/bifrost-http/handlers/...

The new regression test should pass, confirming that encoded traversal requests return 401 Unauthorized and that legitimate whitelisted routes continue to bypass auth as expected.

Breaking changes

• Yes
• No

Security considerations

This is a security fix for an authentication bypass. Requests using percent-encoded path traversal sequences to make a protected route appear whitelisted are now correctly blocked. Any client relying on encoded traversal paths to access protected endpoints without credentials will receive 401 Unauthorized. Legitimate clients using properly formed, unencoded paths are unaffected.

Checklist

• I read docs/contributing/README.md and followed the guidelines
• I added/updated tests where appropriate
• I updated documentation where needed
• I verified builds succeed (Go and UI)
• I verified the CI pipeline passes locally if applicable

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: 87e30ab4-8136-4d19-98dc-2bfe424744bc

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 1ca7677 and 37e58b8.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• transports/bifrost-http/handlers/middlewares.go
• transports/bifrost-http/handlers/middlewares_test.go

🚧 Files skipped from review as they are similar to previous changes (2)

• transports/bifrost-http/handlers/middlewares.go
• transports/bifrost-http/handlers/middlewares_test.go

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📝 Walkthrough

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes
  • Improved authentication checks for encoded and doubly encoded path traversal attempts.
  • Prevented unauthorized requests from accessing routes exempt from authentication.
  • Preserved access for legitimate, unencoded requests to approved routes.

Walkthrough

The authentication middleware now matches whitelist entries against PathOriginal(). Regression tests cover encoded and doubly encoded traversal paths and confirm that only the legitimate skills route bypasses authentication.

Changes

Authentication path matching

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Raw path authentication matching transports/bifrost-http/handlers/middlewares.go, transports/bifrost-http/handlers/middlewares_test.go	The middleware uses PathOriginal() for whitelist matching. Tests verify that encoded traversal requests return 401 Unauthorized without invoking the next handler, while the valid skills route remains accessible.

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• maximhq/bifrost#5763: Both changes address authentication bypasses caused by path normalization.
• maximhq/bifrost#5778: Both changes modify authentication middleware behavior, including authentication bypass handling.

Suggested reviewers: tejasghatte, pratham-mishra04, roroghost17

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly identifies the main authentication path-whitelisting change.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description covers the purpose, changes, testing, affected areas, security impact, breaking changes, and checklist.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

✨ Finishing Touches

📝 Generate docstrings

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch align-auth-whitelist-with-router-path-matching

Warning

There were issues while running some tools. Please review the errors and either fix the tool's configuration or disable the tool if it's a critical failure.

🔧 golangci-lint (2.12.2)

level=error msg="[linters_context] typechecking error: pattern ./...: directory prefix . does not contain main module or its selected dependencies"

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[akshaydeo]

• auth path whitelisting #5765 👈 (View in Graphite)
• dev

This stack of pull requests is managed by Graphite. Learn more about stacking.

[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 1

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

Inline comments:
In `@transports/bifrost-http/handlers/middlewares_test.go`:
- Around line 765-766: Update the traversal-path test case in the middleware
test table to use double percent encoding for each dot and slash component, such
as the proposed %25-prefixed form, so it exercises two decoding passes while
preserving the expected rejection behavior.

🪄 Autofix (Beta)

Fix all unresolved CodeRabbit comments on this PR:

• Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
• Create a new PR with the fixes

---

ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: 392560bf-8ebd-46e0-92e2-44a764328afb

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between e493a6a and 1ca7677.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• transports/bifrost-http/handlers/middlewares.go
• transports/bifrost-http/handlers/middlewares_test.go

The merge-base changed after approval.