Fastify's Missing End Anchor in "subtypeNameReg" Allows Malformed Content-Types to Pass Validation

Description

Fastify incorrectly accepts malformed Content-Type headers containing trailing characters after the subtype token, in violation of RFC 9110 §8.3.1. For example, a request sent with Content-Type: application/json garbage passes validation and is processed normally, rather than being rejected with 415 Unsupported Media Type.

When regex-based content-type parsers are in use (a documented Fastify feature), the malformed value is matched against registered parsers using the full string including the trailing garbage. This means a request with an invalid content-type may be routed to and processed by a parser it should never have reached.

Impact

An attacker can send requests with RFC-invalid Content-Type headers that bypass validity checks, reach content-type parser matching, and be processed by the server. Requests that should be rejected at the validation stage are instead handled as if the content-type were valid.

Workarounds

Deploy a WAF rule to protect against this

Fix

The fix is available starting with v5.8.1.