Test for cache poisoning & deception

Attention

Use --aggressive only against systems you own or have explicit written permission to test. A positive result means the probe just demonstrated it can plant content in a shared cache other users may be served.

Run the aggressive checks

cache-detective scan --url https://staging.example.com/ --aggressive

This enables the four checks documented in Cache poisoning & deception: unkeyed header injection, cache deception, error-response caching, and response splitting via cache-key manipulation. Every other check (cacheability, live cache state, CDN fingerprinting, cache key & Vary, response consistency) runs regardless of --aggressive.

Cap the request volume

Each aggressive check issues extra requests to the live target. --max-aggressive-requests (default 10) is a hard cap per resource, applied even with --aggressive set:

cache-detective scan --url https://staging.example.com/ --aggressive --max-aggressive-requests 4

Testing an authenticated endpoint for cache deception

Cache deception is most dangerous on endpoints that serve per-user content. Pass credentials so the probe hits the endpoint the way a logged-in user would:

cache-detective scan --url https://staging.example.com/account --aggressive \
  --bearer "$TOKEN"

If the response is served identically (and cacheably) under a path-confused URL like /account.js or /account/nonexistent.css, you’ll see a Cache deception via path confusion finding (high severity, CWE-524). Combined with credentials, also check for Authenticated response marked cacheable (see Cacheability analysis) — that check runs by default, without --aggressive, since it’s a passive analysis of the response your own request received.

Interpreting a finding

cache-detective scan --url https://staging.example.com/poison --aggressive --show-all-findings

An Unkeyed header injection via X-Forwarded-Host finding means: a marker value sent in that header was reflected into the response, and a completely plain follow-up request received the same poisoned response back. That’s proof the header isn’t part of the cache key at your CDN/reverse-proxy layer — any attacker who can reach the endpoint can plant arbitrary content for other visitors until the cache entry expires or is purged.

CI integration

See the GitHub Actions guide for gating a build on a specific aggressive-mode finding.