SQL Injection, CWE-89, CAPEC-66, Single Quote Database Injection, DORK, GHDB, app.businessweek.com

CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

Report generated by XSS.CX at Wed Apr 27 15:09:01 CDT 2011.

Public Domain Vulnerability Information, Security Articles, Vulnerability Reports, GHDB, DORK Search

1. SQL injection

2. SQL statement in request parameter

3. Session token in URL

3.1. http://app.businessweek.com/UserComments/combo_review

3.2. http://app.businessweek.com/UserComments/static/admin.css

3.3. http://app.businessweek.com/UserComments/static/ratings_v2.js

4. Cookie without HttpOnly flag set

5. Cross-domain Referer leakage

6. Email addresses disclosed

1. SQL injection next

Summary

Severity:	High
Confidence:	Firm
Host:	http://app.businessweek.com
Path:	/UserComments/combo_review

Issue detail

The productId parameter appears to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. The payload ' was submitted in the productId 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 Oracle.

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 /UserComments/combo_review?action=list&style=wide&productId=126845'&initialView=true&productCode=spec HTTP/1.1
Host: app.businessweek.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2011/tc20110425_434882.htm
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.205 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: __utmz=1.1303834675.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); s_vi=[CS]v1|26DB7824051632CF-40000178A0270C0F[CE]; __utma=1.1606653479.1303834675.1303834675.1303907348.2; __utmc=1; __utmb=1.1.10.1303907348; s_cc=true; s_p_s_prop22=unknown-www; SC_LINKS=%5B%5BB%5D%5D; gpv_p48=no%20value; s_c22=unknown-www; s_sq=%5B%5BB%5D%5D; rsi_segs=F07607_10001

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 12:34:45 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_jk/1.2.31
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=77DDC444B96EA6ED552CE7642E2BFD80.ny06tls; Path=/
Content-Length: 3798
benv: njbweb03
Cache-Control: s-maxage=300, max-age=300, must-revalidate
Content-Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html>
<head>

<style type="text/css">
.reviewBlock { marg
...[SNIP]...
<div id="error" style="display:none">

Error: com.businessweek.reviews.DataAccessException : Problem while working with database: ORA-00907: missing right parenthesis
ORA-06512: at "READERCOMMENTSMGR.SP_GETAPPROVEDREVIEWPAGE", line 52
ORA-06512: at line 1

</div>
...[SNIP]...

2. SQL statement in request parameter previous next

Summary

Severity:	Medium
Confidence:	Tentative
Host:	http://app.businessweek.com
Path:	/UserComments/combo_review

Issue description

The request appears to contain SQL syntax. If this is incorporated into a SQL query and executed by the server, then the application is almost certainly vulnerable to SQL injection.

You should verify whether the request contains a genuine SQL query and whether this is being executed by the server.

Issue remediation

The application should not incorporate any user-controllable data directly into SQL queries. Parameterised queries (also known as prepared statements) should be used to safely insert data into predefined queries. In no circumstances should users be able to control or modify the structure of the SQL query itself.

Request

GET /UserComments/combo_review?action=list&style=wide&productId=(utl_inaddr.get_host_address((select+chr(95)%7C%7Cchr(33)%7C%7Cchr(64)%7C%7Cchr(51)%7C%7Cchr(100)%7C%7Cchr(105)%7C%7Cchr(108)%7C%7Cchr(101)%7C%7Cchr(109)%7C%7Cchr(109)%7C%7Cchr(97)+from+DUAL)))&initialView=true&productCode=spec HTTP/1.1
Host: app.businessweek.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.205 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: __utmz=1.1303834675.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); s_vi=[CS]v1|26DB7824051632CF-40000178A0270C0F[CE]; __utma=1.1606653479.1303834675.1303834675.1303907348.2; __utmc=1; __utmb=1.1.10.1303907348; s_cc=true; s_p_s_prop22=unknown-www; SC_LINKS=%5B%5BB%5D%5D; gpv_p48=no%20value; s_c22=unknown-www; s_sq=%5B%5BB%5D%5D; rsi_segs=F07607_10001; JSESSIONID=77DDC444B96EA6ED552CE7642E2BFD80.ny06tls

Response

3. Session token in URL previous next
There are 3 instances of this issue:

/UserComments/combo_review
/UserComments/static/admin.css
/UserComments/static/ratings_v2.js

Issue background

Sensitive information within URLs may be logged in various locations, including the user's browser, the web server, and any forward or reverse proxy servers between the two endpoints. URLs may also be displayed on-screen, bookmarked or emailed around by users. They may be disclosed to third parties via the Referer header when any off-site links are followed. Placing session tokens into the URL increases the risk that they will be captured by an attacker.

Issue remediation

The application should use an alternative mechanism for transmitting session tokens, such as HTTP cookies or hidden fields in forms that are submitted using the POST method.

3.1. http://app.businessweek.com/UserComments/combo_review next

Summary

Severity:	Medium
Confidence:	Firm
Host:	http://app.businessweek.com
Path:	/UserComments/combo_review

Issue detail

The response contains the following links that appear to contain session tokens:

http://app.businessweek.com/UserComments/static/ratings_v2.js;jsessionid=8B869271F2FB3BD04330634C0913D78C.ny06tls

Request

GET /UserComments/combo_review?action=list&style=wide&productId=126845&initialView=true&productCode=spec HTTP/1.1
Host: app.businessweek.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2011/tc20110425_434882.htm
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.205 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: __utmz=1.1303834675.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); s_vi=[CS]v1|26DB7824051632CF-40000178A0270C0F[CE]; __utma=1.1606653479.1303834675.1303834675.1303907348.2; __utmc=1; __utmb=1.1.10.1303907348; s_cc=true; s_p_s_prop22=unknown-www; SC_LINKS=%5B%5BB%5D%5D; gpv_p48=no%20value; s_c22=unknown-www; s_sq=%5B%5BB%5D%5D; rsi_segs=F07607_10001

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 12:34:23 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_jk/1.2.31
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=8B869271F2FB3BD04330634C0913D78C.ny06tls; Path=/
Content-Length: 7156
benv: njbweb03
Cache-Control: s-maxage=300, max-age=300, must-revalidate
Content-Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

<head>

...[SNIP]...
<input type="hidden" name="rating" id="rating" value='0' />


   <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="/UserComments/static/ratings_v2.js;jsessionid=8B869271F2FB3BD04330634C0913D78C.ny06tls"></script>
...[SNIP]...

3.2. http://app.businessweek.com/UserComments/static/admin.css previous next

Summary

Severity:	Medium
Confidence:	Firm
Host:	http://app.businessweek.com
Path:	/UserComments/static/admin.css

Issue detail

The URL in the request appears to contain a session token within the query string:

http://app.businessweek.com/UserComments/static/admin.css;jsessionid=77DDC444B96EA6ED552CE7642E2BFD80.ny06tls

Request

GET /UserComments/static/admin.css;jsessionid=77DDC444B96EA6ED552CE7642E2BFD80.ny06tls HTTP/1.1
Host: app.businessweek.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://app.businessweek.com/UserComments/combo_review?action=list&style=wide&productId=126845'&initialView=true&productCode=spec
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.205 Safari/534.16
Accept: text/css,*/*;q=0.1
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: __utmz=1.1303834675.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); s_vi=[CS]v1|26DB7824051632CF-40000178A0270C0F[CE]; __utma=1.1606653479.1303834675.1303834675.1303907348.2; __utmc=1; __utmb=1.1.10.1303907348; s_cc=true; s_p_s_prop22=unknown-www; SC_LINKS=%5B%5BB%5D%5D; gpv_p48=no%20value; s_c22=unknown-www; s_sq=%5B%5BB%5D%5D; rsi_segs=F07607_10001; JSESSIONID=77DDC444B96EA6ED552CE7642E2BFD80.ny06tls

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 12:39:22 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_jk/1.2.31
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Last-Modified: Tue, 05 Apr 2011 23:29:48 GMT
Content-Length: 2117
benv: njbweb01
Cache-Control: s-maxage=300, max-age=300, must-revalidate
Content-Type: text/css

BODY { margin:10px !important; }
.prodNav { font-weight:bold; border-top:2px solid #CCCCCC; border-bottom:2px solid #CCCCCC; margin-bottom:15px; margin-top:5px; background:#efefef; padding:3px; }
.pro
...[SNIP]...

3.3. http://app.businessweek.com/UserComments/static/ratings_v2.js previous

Summary

Severity:	Medium
Confidence:	Firm
Host:	http://app.businessweek.com
Path:	/UserComments/static/ratings_v2.js

Issue detail

The URL in the request appears to contain a session token within the query string:

http://app.businessweek.com/UserComments/static/ratings_v2.js;jsessionid=9AA3D1E092966FFAE3284978984EAE0A.ny04tls

Request

GET /UserComments/static/ratings_v2.js;jsessionid=9AA3D1E092966FFAE3284978984EAE0A.ny04tls HTTP/1.1
Host: app.businessweek.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://app.businessweek.com/UserComments/combo_review?action=list&style=wide&productId=126845&initialView=true&productCode=spec
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.205 Safari/534.16
Accept: */*
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: __utmz=1.1303834675.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); s_vi=[CS]v1|26DB7824051632CF-40000178A0270C0F[CE]; __utma=1.1606653479.1303834675.1303834675.1303907348.2; __utmc=1; __utmb=1.1.10.1303907348; s_cc=true; s_p_s_prop22=unknown-www; SC_LINKS=%5B%5BB%5D%5D; gpv_p48=no%20value; s_c22=unknown-www; s_sq=%5B%5BB%5D%5D; rsi_segs=F07607_10001; JSESSIONID=9AA3D1E092966FFAE3284978984EAE0A.ny04tls

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 12:35:33 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_jk/1.2.31
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Last-Modified: Tue, 05 Apr 2011 23:29:48 GMT
Content-Length: 521
benv: njbweb01
Cache-Control: s-maxage=300, max-age=300, must-revalidate
Content-Type: text/javascript

ratingImg = document.images["ratingGif"];
ratingInput = document.getElementById("rating");

stars = new Array();
for (i = 0; i <= 10; i++) stars[i] = addImg(i);

function addImg (seed) {
newIm
...[SNIP]...

4. Cookie without HttpOnly flag set previous next

Summary

Severity:	Low
Confidence:	Firm
Host:	http://app.businessweek.com
Path:	/UserComments/combo_review

Issue detail

The following cookie was issued by the application and does not have the HttpOnly flag set:

JSESSIONID=8B869271F2FB3BD04330634C0913D78C.ny06tls; Path=/

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

Response

5. Cross-domain Referer leakage previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://app.businessweek.com
Path:	/UserComments/combo_review

Issue detail

The page was loaded from a URL containing a query string:

http://app.businessweek.com/UserComments/combo_review?action=list&style=wide&productId=(utl_inaddr.get_host_address((select+chr(95)%7C%7Cchr(33)%7C%7Cchr(64)%7C%7Cchr(51)%7C%7Cchr(100)%7C%7Cchr(105)%7C%7Cchr(108)%7C%7Cchr(101)%7C%7Cchr(109)%7C%7Cchr(109)%7C%7Cchr(97)+from+DUAL)))&initialView=true&productCode=spec

The response contains the following links to other domains:

http://onlinepressroom.net/businessweek/
http://www.bloomberg.com/
http://www.businessweekreprints.ygsgroup.com/

Issue background

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.

Request

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 12:39:57 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_jk/1.2.31
Content-Length: 3846
benv: njbweb02
Cache-Control: s-maxage=300, max-age=300, must-revalidate
Content-Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html>
<head>

<style type="text/css">
.reviewBlock { marg
...[SNIP]...
<div id="footer-inner">
<a rel="external" id="logo-bb" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/" target="_blank">
<img src="http://images.businessweek.com/gen/logos/bloomberg/bloomberg-footer.png" title="Bloomberg L.P." class="bb-logo" alt="Bloomberg Logo"/>
...[SNIP]...
<p class="company-links">
<a class="first" href="http://onlinepressroom.net/businessweek/">About</a>
...[SNIP]...
</a>
<a href="http://www.businessweekreprints.ygsgroup.com/">Reprints</a>
...[SNIP]...
</a>
<a class="last" href="http://onlinepressroom.net/businessweek/">Press Room</a>
...[SNIP]...

6. Email addresses disclosed previous

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://app.businessweek.com
Path:	/UserComments/combo_review

Issue detail

The following email address was disclosed in the response:

business_exchange@businessweek.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 /UserComments/combo_review HTTP/1.1
Host: app.businessweek.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.205 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: __utmz=1.1303834675.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); s_vi=[CS]v1|26DB7824051632CF-40000178A0270C0F[CE]; __utma=1.1606653479.1303834675.1303834675.1303907348.2; rsi_segs=F07607_10001

Response

HTTP/1.1 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 18:45:14 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_jk/1.2.31
Last-Modified: Sat, 01 May 2010 09:57:40 GMT
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 10021
benv: nybweb04
Cache-Control: s-maxage=300, max-age=300, must-revalidate
Edge-Control: no-store
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-
...[SNIP]...
<a href="mailto:business_exchange@businessweek.com">
...[SNIP]...

Report generated by XSS.CX at Wed Apr 27 15:09:01 CDT 2011.