The Year parameter appears to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. The payload ' was submitted in the Year 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 Microsoft Access.
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
GET /nr/alertsArchv.asp?Year=2006' HTTP/1.1 Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDSSSASTRS=AOLLAMJAKHMOMMMNLJCHGNIN Host: www.brownrudnick.com Connection: Keep-alive Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5 Accept: */*
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0 Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 18:47:11 GMT X-Powered-By: ASP.NET MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub Content-Length: 13913 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDSQRDRRTT=LPGCALMBHBMDBAFEOEDHOHHC; path=/ Cache-control: private
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> <title>Brown Rudnick - Alerts and Newsletters - ...[SNIP]... </i> Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers<br> ...[SNIP]...
2. Cross-site scripting (reflected)previousnext There are 2 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 Year request parameter is copied into the HTML document as plain text between tags. The payload 431bc<script>alert(1)</script>069fa5b0117 was submitted in the Year 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 /nr/alertsArchv.asp?Year=2006431bc<script>alert(1)</script>069fa5b0117 HTTP/1.1 Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDSSSASTRS=AOLLAMJAKHMOMMMNLJCHGNIN Host: www.brownrudnick.com Connection: Keep-alive Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5 Accept: */*
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0 Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 18:47:10 GMT X-Powered-By: ASP.NET MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub Content-Length: 13992 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDSQRDRRTT=KPGCALMBKHIIAMHHIBKADIIJ; path=/ Cache-control: private
The value of the ID request parameter is copied into the HTML document as plain text between tags. The payload 5d6aa<script>alert(1)</script>78389e1a6ea was submitted in the ID 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 /nr/articlesindv.asp?ID=554f0bd0<script>alert(document.cookie)</script>ba5591b9a235d6aa<script>alert(1)</script>78389e1a6ea HTTP/1.1 Pragma: no-cache Host: www.brownrudnick.com Connection: Keep-alive User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5 Accept: */*
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0 Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 18:48:17 GMT X-Powered-By: ASP.NET MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub Content-Length: 11278 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDSQRDRRTT=EEHCALMBMMHJOCDFIKKJMEBE; path=/ Cache-control: private
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.
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.
Request
GET /nr/alertsArchv.asp?Year=2006 HTTP/1.1 Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDSSSASTRS=AOLLAMJAKHMOMMMNLJCHGNIN Host: www.brownrudnick.com Connection: Keep-alive Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5 Accept: */*
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0 Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 18:46:49 GMT X-Powered-By: ASP.NET MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub Content-Length: 23971 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDSQRDRRTT=COGCALMBNJPDKEEGDCLIJLKB; path=/ Cache-control: private
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.
Request
GET /nr/alertsArchv.asp?Year=2006 HTTP/1.1 Host: www.brownrudnick.com Proxy-Connection: keep-alive User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/534.24 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/11.0.696.60 Safari/534.24 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: ASPSESSIONIDSQRDRRTT=LPGCALMBHBMDBAFEOEDHOHHC
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0 Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 20:53:22 GMT X-Powered-By: ASP.NET MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub Content-Length: 23971 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDQSRCRQSS=ANFNGECCFCHCHLCEIHEFGFPD; path=/ Cache-control: private
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.
Request
GET /nr/articlesindv.asp?ID=554f0bd0<script>alert(document.cookie)</script>ba5591b9a23 HTTP/1.1 Pragma: no-cache Host: www.brownrudnick.com Connection: Keep-alive User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5 Accept: */*
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0 Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 18:48:10 GMT X-Powered-By: ASP.NET MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub Content-Length: 11237 Content-Type: text/html Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDSQRDRRTT=ADHCALMBLMFJLBFNGJKMHGAL; path=/ Cache-control: private
When a web browser makes a request for a resource, it typically adds an HTTP header, called the "Referer" header, indicating the URL of the resource from which the request originated. This occurs in numerous situations, for example when a web page loads an image or script, or when a user clicks on a link or submits a form.
If the resource being requested resides on a different domain, then the Referer header is still generally included in the cross-domain request. If the originating URL contains any sensitive information within its query string, such as a session token, then this information will be transmitted to the other domain. If the other domain is not fully trusted by the application, then this may lead to a security compromise.
You should review the contents of the information being transmitted to other domains, and also determine whether those domains are fully trusted by the originating application.
Today's browsers may withhold the Referer header in some situations (for example, when loading a non-HTTPS resource from a page that was loaded over HTTPS, or when a Refresh directive is issued), but this behaviour should not be relied upon to protect the originating URL from disclosure.
Note also that if users can author content within the application then an attacker may be able to inject links referring to a domain they control in order to capture data from URLs used within the application.
Issue remediation
The application should never transmit any sensitive information within the URL query string. In addition to being leaked in the Referer header, such information may be logged in various locations and may be visible on-screen to untrusted parties.
The TRACE method is designed for diagnostic purposes. If enabled, the web server will respond to requests which use the TRACE method by echoing in its response the exact request which was received.
Although this behaviour is apparently harmless in itself, it can sometimes be leveraged to support attacks against other application users. If an attacker can find a way of causing a user to make a TRACE request, and can retrieve the response to that request, then the attacker will be able to capture any sensitive data which is included in the request by the user's browser, for example session cookies or credentials for platform-level authentication. This may exacerbate the impact of other vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting.
Issue remediation
The TRACE method should be disabled on the web server.
The following email address was disclosed in the response:
jmcelhenney@brownrudnick.com
Issue background
The presence of email addresses within application responses does not necessarily constitute a security vulnerability. Email addresses may appear intentionally within contact information, and many applications (such as web mail) include arbitrary third-party email addresses within their core content.
However, email addresses of developers and other individuals (whether appearing on-screen or hidden within page source) may disclose information that is useful to an attacker; for example, they may represent usernames that can be used at the application's login, and they may be used in social engineering attacks against the organisation's personnel. Unnecessary or excessive disclosure of email addresses may also lead to an increase in the volume of spam email received.
Issue remediation
You should review the email addresses being disclosed by the application, and consider removing any that are unnecessary, or replacing personal addresses with anonymous mailbox addresses (such as helpdesk@example.com).
Request
GET /nr/ HTTP/1.0 Pragma: no-cache Host: www.brownrudnick.com Connection: Close Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5 Accept: */*
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub Content-Location: http://www.brownrudnick.com/nr/Default.htm Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 18:48:10 GMT Content-Type: text/html Accept-Ranges: bytes Last-Modified: Fri, 06 May 2011 16:34:57 GMT ETag: "c8398589bccc1:1911" Content-Length: 14757