Apache decoding semicolon - mod_proxy

Question

Apache, receiving a request with an encoded semicolon (%3B) is decoding it before passing the request to a proxy (backend of Spring Tomcat).

Relevant apache Virtual host lines are:

ProxyPreserveHost on RequestHeader set X-Forwarded-Proto https ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:8081/ ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:8081/ 

So for example when a request for URL like

http://testsite.com/page/%27+many+times%3B+the+valiant/author 

Would be proxy forwarded as

http://testsite.com/page/%27+many+times/author 

Is there something I can do to prevent apache from decoding that URL before forwarding it to proxy?

Perhaps relevant issue noted on apache.org/bugzilla

Answer 1

mod_proxy canonicalise URLs passed to the backend. If you want suppress this behavior use nocanon keyword and this passes the URL path "raw" to the backend.

Eg:

ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:8081/ nocanon