The REST URL parameter 3 appears to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. A single quote was submitted in the REST URL parameter 3, 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.
Issue background
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.
Request 1
GET /uk/profile/unco-web-design' HTTP/1.1 Host: www.whichwebdesigncompany.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
..................select * from companies where name_parsed='unco-web-design'' ---> mySQL Error: 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 ''unco-web-design''' at line 1\n\r
Request 2
GET /uk/profile/unco-web-design'' HTTP/1.1 Host: www.whichwebdesigncompany.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
The name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload b09d8"><script>alert(1)</script>eedc70267bf was submitted in the name of an arbitrarily supplied request 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.
Issue background
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.
Request
GET /uk/profile/unco-web-design?b09d8"><script>alert(1)</script>eedc70267bf=1 HTTP/1.1 Host: www.whichwebdesigncompany.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 17:54:48 GMT Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=jk59lh7qvbb3kafcr8qdmq8m16; expires=Sat, 16-Apr-2011 17:54:48 GMT; path=/ Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: max-age=300, must-revalidate Pragma: no-cache Connection: close Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 48478
<!--array(28) { ["companyId"]=> string(4) "2233" ["clientsLocation"]=> string(8) "UK based" ["description"]=> string(232) "We work strategically, creatively and technically across all kind ...[SNIP]... <a href="/uk/profile/unco-web-design?b09d8"><script>alert(1)</script>eedc70267bf=1/write-review"> ...[SNIP]...
3. Cleartext submission of passwordpreviousnext There are 2 instances of this issue:
Passwords submitted over an unencrypted connection are vulnerable to capture by an attacker who is suitably positioned on the network. This includes any malicious party located on the user's own network, within their ISP, within the ISP used by the application, and within the application's hosting infrastructure. Even if switched networks are employed at some of these locations, techniques exist to circumvent this defence and monitor the traffic passing through switches.
Issue remediation
The application should use transport-level encryption (SSL or TLS) to protect all sensitive communications passing between the client and the server. Communications that should be protected include the login mechanism and related functionality, and any functions where sensitive data can be accessed or privileged actions can be performed. These areas of the application should employ their own session handling mechanism, and the session tokens used should never be transmitted over unencrypted communications. If HTTP cookies are used for transmitting session tokens, then the secure flag should be set to prevent transmission over clear-text HTTP.
The page contains a form with the following action URL, which is submitted over clear-text HTTP:
http://www.whichwebdesigncompany.com/uk
The form contains the following password field:
password
Request
GET /uk HTTP/1.1 Host: www.whichwebdesigncompany.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://burp/show/6 Cache-Control: max-age=0 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.133 Safari/534.16 Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 Cookie: PHPSESSID=b3p8qb01mevh7m7t7emcgacjl7
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:05:38 GMT Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: max-age=300, must-revalidate Pragma: no-cache Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 34420
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <title>Which Web Design Company in UK?</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <sty ...[SNIP]... </div>
GET /uk/profile/unco-web-design HTTP/1.1 Host: www.whichwebdesigncompany.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 17:54:30 GMT Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=us7c8lkkotem3is4ikj3jhdb62; expires=Sat, 16-Apr-2011 17:54:30 GMT; path=/ Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: max-age=300, must-revalidate Pragma: no-cache Connection: close Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 48460
<!--array(28) { ["companyId"]=> string(4) "2233" ["clientsLocation"]=> string(8) "UK based" ["description"]=> string(232) "We work strategically, creatively and technically across all kind ...[SNIP]... </div>
The cookie appears to contain a session token, which may increase the risk associated with this issue. You should review the contents of the cookie to determine its function.
Issue background
If the HttpOnly attribute is set on a cookie, then the cookie's value cannot be read or set by client-side JavaScript. This measure can prevent certain client-side attacks, such as cross-site scripting, from trivially capturing the cookie's value via an injected script.
Issue remediation
There is usually no good reason not to set the HttpOnly flag on all cookies. Unless you specifically require legitimate client-side scripts within your application to read or set a cookie's value, you should set the HttpOnly flag by including this attribute within the relevant Set-cookie directive.
You should be aware that the restrictions imposed by the HttpOnly flag can potentially be circumvented in some circumstances, and that numerous other serious attacks can be delivered by client-side script injection, aside from simple cookie stealing.
Request
GET /uk/profile/unco-web-design HTTP/1.1 Host: www.whichwebdesigncompany.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 17:54:30 GMT Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=us7c8lkkotem3is4ikj3jhdb62; expires=Sat, 16-Apr-2011 17:54:30 GMT; path=/ Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: max-age=300, must-revalidate Pragma: no-cache Connection: close Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 48460
<!--array(28) { ["companyId"]=> string(4) "2233" ["clientsLocation"]=> string(8) "UK based" ["description"]=> string(232) "We work strategically, creatively and technically across all kind ...[SNIP]...
5. Password field with autocomplete enabledpreviousnext There are 2 instances of this issue:
Most browsers have a facility to remember user credentials that are entered into HTML forms. This function can be configured by the user and also by applications which employ user credentials. If the function is enabled, then credentials entered by the user are stored on their local computer and retrieved by the browser on future visits to the same application.
The stored credentials can be captured by an attacker who gains access to the computer, either locally or through some remote compromise. Further, methods have existed whereby a malicious web site can retrieve the stored credentials for other applications, by exploiting browser vulnerabilities or through application-level cross-domain attacks.
Issue remediation
To prevent browsers from storing credentials entered into HTML forms, you should include the attribute autocomplete="off" within the FORM tag (to protect all form fields) or within the relevant INPUT tags (to protect specific individual fields).
The page contains a form with the following action URL:
http://www.whichwebdesigncompany.com/uk
The form contains the following password field with autocomplete enabled:
password
Request
GET /uk HTTP/1.1 Host: www.whichwebdesigncompany.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://burp/show/6 Cache-Control: max-age=0 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.133 Safari/534.16 Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 Cookie: PHPSESSID=b3p8qb01mevh7m7t7emcgacjl7
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:05:38 GMT Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: max-age=300, must-revalidate Pragma: no-cache Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 34420
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <title>Which Web Design Company in UK?</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <sty ...[SNIP]... </div>
The form contains the following password field with autocomplete enabled:
password
Request
GET /uk/profile/unco-web-design HTTP/1.1 Host: www.whichwebdesigncompany.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 17:54:30 GMT Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=us7c8lkkotem3is4ikj3jhdb62; expires=Sat, 16-Apr-2011 17:54:30 GMT; path=/ Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Cache-Control: max-age=300, must-revalidate Pragma: no-cache Connection: close Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 48460
<!--array(28) { ["companyId"]=> string(4) "2233" ["clientsLocation"]=> string(8) "UK based" ["description"]=> string(232) "We work strategically, creatively and technically across all kind ...[SNIP]... </div>
If a web response specifies an incorrect content type, then browsers may process the response in unexpected ways. If the specified content type is a renderable text-based format, then the browser will usually attempt to parse and render the response in that format. If the specified type is an image format, then the browser will usually detect the anomaly and will analyse the actual content and attempt to determine its MIME type. Either case can lead to unexpected results, and if the content contains any user-controllable data may lead to cross-site scripting or other client-side vulnerabilities.
In most cases, the presence of an incorrect content type statement does not constitute a security flaw, particularly if the response contains static content. You should review the contents of the response and the context in which it appears to determine whether any vulnerability exists.
Issue remediation
For every response containing a message body, the application should include a single Content-type header which correctly and unambiguously states the MIME type of the content in the response body.