Nitro has a proxy scope bypass via percent-encoded path traversal in `routeRules`

A proxy route rule like:

routeRules: {
  "/api/orders/**": { proxy: { to: "http://upstream/orders/**" } }
}

is intended to limit the proxy to URLs under /api/orders/. Before the patch, an attacker could bypass that scope by sending percent-encoded path traversal (..%2f) in the URL, causing Nitro to forward a request that the upstream resolved outside the configured scope. Example exploit:

GET /api/orders/..%2fadmin%2fconfig.json

Nitro sees ..%2f as opaque characters at match time, the /api/orders/** rule matched, and the raw path was forwarded to the upstream as /orders/..%2fadmin/config.json. An upstream that decodes %2F to / then resolved .. and can serve /admin/config.json outside the intended scope.

Are you affected?

Users may be affected if ALL of the following are true:

1. Their project uses Nitro's routeRules with a proxy entry ({ proxy: { to: "..." } }).
2. The proxy to value uses a /** wildcard suffix to forward sub-paths.
3. The upstream behind the proxy decodes %2F as / before routing or filesystem lookup.
4. Proxy route rules are not handled natively at CDN (nitro v3 and vercel)

Whether the bypass actually leaks data depends on the upstream. Modern JS frameworks keep %2F opaque per RFC 3986 and are safe by construction.

• Safe examples: H3 v2, Express v5, Hono v4 — modern JS frameworks keep %2F opaque per RFC 3986.
• Vulnerable examples: naive imlementations that decodes the URL, static file servers, CGI dispatchers, Python os.path-based routing, anything sitting behind another layer that decodes %2F (common in microservice meshes).

Impact

Any HTTP path reachable from the Nitro server to the upstream could be requested, regardless of the configured /** scope. In typical deployments (API gateway, BFF, microservice proxy) this could expose internal admin endpoints, secrets endpoints, or other services the developer believed the scope rule fenced off.

Patched versions

Upgrade to one of:

• 2.13.4 or later (https://github.com/nitrojs/nitro/pull/4223)
• 3.0.260429-beta or later (https://github.com/nitrojs/nitro/pull/4222)

The fix canonicalizes the incoming pathname before building the upstream URL and rejects requests with 400 Bad Request if the resolved path would escape the rule's base. The bytes forwarded upstream are unchanged when the request is allowed.

Note: the fix assumes the upstream does not double-decode percent-encoding. If your upstream decodes twice (%252F → %2F → /), it remains your responsibility to harden it. Single-decode is standard.

Credits

Reported by @mHe4am (@he4am on HackerOne) via the Vercel Open Source program.