XSS, Reflected Cross Site Scripting, CWE-79, CAPEC-86, DORK, GHDB, webimmune.net

The value of the Message request parameter is copied into a JavaScript string which is encapsulated in single quotation marks. The payload 219be'-alert(1)-'602e26a20d0 was submitted in the Message 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.

Remediation detail

Echoing user-controllable data within a script context is inherently dangerous and can make XSS attacks difficult to prevent. If at all possible, the application should avoid echoing user data within this context.

Issue background

Reflected cross-site scripting vulnerabilities arise when data is copied from a request and echoed into the application's immediate response in an unsafe way. An attacker can use the vulnerability to construct a request which, if issued by another application user, will cause JavaScript code supplied by the attacker to execute within the user's browser in the context of that user's session with the application.

The attacker-supplied code can perform a wide variety of actions, such as stealing the victim's session token or login credentials, performing arbitrary actions on the victim's behalf, and logging their keystrokes.

Users can be induced to issue the attacker's crafted request in various ways. For example, the attacker can send a victim a link containing a malicious URL in an email or instant message. They can submit the link to popular web sites that allow content authoring, for example in blog comments. And they can create an innocuous looking web site which causes anyone viewing it to make arbitrary cross-domain requests to the vulnerable application (using either the GET or the POST method).

The security impact of cross-site scripting vulnerabilities is dependent upon the nature of the vulnerable application, the kinds of data and functionality which it contains, and the other applications which belong to the same domain and organisation. If the application is used only to display non-sensitive public content, with no authentication or access control functionality, then a cross-site scripting flaw may be considered low risk. However, if the same application resides on a domain which can access cookies for other more security-critical applications, then the vulnerability could be used to attack those other applications, and so may be considered high risk. Similarly, if the organisation which owns the application is a likely target for phishing attacks, then the vulnerability could be leveraged to lend credibility to such attacks, by injecting Trojan functionality into the vulnerable application, and exploiting users' trust in the organisation in order to capture credentials for other applications which it owns. In many kinds of application, such as those providing online banking functionality, cross-site scripting should always be considered high risk.

Remediation background

In most situations where user-controllable data is copied into application responses, cross-site scripting attacks can be prevented using two layers of defences:

Input should be validated as strictly as possible on arrival, given the kind of content which it is expected to contain. For example, personal names should consist of alphabetical and a small range of typographical characters, and be relatively short; a year of birth should consist of exactly four numerals; email addresses should match a well-defined regular expression. Input which fails the validation should be rejected, not sanitised.
User input should be HTML-encoded at any point where it is copied into application responses. All HTML metacharacters, including < > " ' and =, should be replaced with the corresponding HTML entities (< > etc).

In cases where the application's functionality allows users to author content using a restricted subset of HTML tags and attributes (for example, blog comments which allow limited formatting and linking), it is necessary to parse the supplied HTML to validate that it does not use any dangerous syntax; this is a non-trivial task.

Request

GET /PreRegistration.asp?Message=You%20must%20register%20before%20you%20can%20request%20your%20password.219be'-alert(1)-'602e26a20d0 HTTP/1.1
Host: www.webimmune.net
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: https://www.webimmune.net/forgetpassword.asp
Cache-Control: max-age=0
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/13.0.782.112 Safari/535.1
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
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: ASPSESSIONIDQSAAATBS=PHEJFPBCHBLFLIIPLLOMNJDD

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:13:35 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Content-Length: 9775
Content-Type: text/html
Cache-control: private

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
   <head>
       <title>McAfee Avert
...[SNIP]...
) {

document.location = "./registration.asp";

}

function LeaveMe() {

document.location = "./default.asp";

}

alert('You must register before you can request your password.219be'-alert(1)-'602e26a20d0');

</SCRIPT>
...[SNIP]...

2. Password field with autocomplete enabled previous next
There are 2 instances of this issue:

/default.asp
/default.asp/

Issue background

Most browsers have a facility to remember user credentials that are entered into HTML forms. This function can be configured by the user and also by applications which employ user credentials. If the function is enabled, then credentials entered by the user are stored on their local computer and retrieved by the browser on future visits to the same application.

The stored credentials can be captured by an attacker who gains access to the computer, either locally or through some remote compromise. Further, methods have existed whereby a malicious web site can retrieve the stored credentials for other applications, by exploiting browser vulnerabilities or through application-level cross-domain attacks.

Issue remediation

To prevent browsers from storing credentials entered into HTML forms, you should include the attribute autocomplete="off" within the FORM tag (to protect all form fields) or within the relevant INPUT tags (to protect specific individual fields).

2.1. https://www.webimmune.net/default.asp next

Summary

Severity:	Low
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	https://www.webimmune.net
Path:	/default.asp

Issue detail

The page contains a form with the following action URL:

https://www.webimmune.net/validateLogin.asp

The form contains the following password field with autocomplete enabled:

password

Request

GET /default.asp HTTP/1.1
Host: www.webimmune.net
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)
Connection: close

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: close
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:08:17 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Content-Length: 11314
Content-Type: text/html
Cache-control: private

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
   <head>
       <title>McAfee Avert
...[SNIP]...
<td>
           <form action="./validateLogin.asp" method="POST" ID="Form1">
               <TABLE ID="Table2">
...[SNIP]...
<TD>
                           <input type="password" size="20" name="password" CLASS="forminput1" ID="Password1">
                       </TD>
...[SNIP]...

2.2. https://www.webimmune.net/default.asp/ previous next

Summary

Severity:	Low
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	https://www.webimmune.net
Path:	/default.asp/

Issue detail

The page contains a form with the following action URL:

https://www.webimmune.net/default.asp/validateLogin.asp

The form contains the following password field with autocomplete enabled:

password

Request

GET /default.asp/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.webimmune.net
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)
Connection: close

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: close
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:08:16 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Content-Length: 11314
Content-Type: text/html
Cache-control: private

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
   <head>
       <title>McAfee Avert
...[SNIP]...
<td>
           <form action="./validateLogin.asp" method="POST" ID="Form1">
               <TABLE ID="Table2">
...[SNIP]...
<TD>
                           <input type="password" size="20" name="password" CLASS="forminput1" ID="Password1">
                       </TD>
...[SNIP]...

3. Email addresses disclosed previous next
There are 5 instances of this issue:

/TempUnavailable.asp
/forgetpassword.asp
/instructions.asp
/preregistration.asp
/registration.asp

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).

3.1. https://www.webimmune.net/TempUnavailable.asp previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	https://www.webimmune.net
Path:	/TempUnavailable.asp

Issue detail

The following email address was disclosed in the response:

virus_research@avertlabs.com

Request

GET /TempUnavailable.asp HTTP/1.1
Host: www.webimmune.net
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: https://www.webimmune.net/default.asp
Cache-Control: max-age=0
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/13.0.782.112 Safari/535.1
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
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: ASPSESSIONIDQSAAATBS=PHEJFPBCHBLFLIIPLLOMNJDD

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:13:41 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Content-Length: 8560
Content-Type: text/html
Cache-control: private

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>McAfee Avert
...[SNIP]...
<a href="mailto:virus_research@avertlabs.com">virus_research@avertlabs.com</a>
...[SNIP]...

3.2. https://www.webimmune.net/forgetpassword.asp previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	https://www.webimmune.net
Path:	/forgetpassword.asp

Issue detail

The following email address was disclosed in the response:

yourname@domain.com

Request

GET /forgetpassword.asp HTTP/1.1
Host: www.webimmune.net
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: https://www.webimmune.net/registration.asp
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/13.0.782.112 Safari/535.1
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
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: ASPSESSIONIDQSAAATBS=PHEJFPBCHBLFLIIPLLOMNJDD

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:12:38 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Content-Length: 10550
Content-Type: text/html
Cache-control: private

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
   <head>
       <title>McAfee Avert
...[SNIP]...
value.indexOf (' ') != -1) || (TheForm.Email_Address.value.indexOf ('yourname') != -1) || (TheForm.Email_Address.value.indexOf ('@domain.com') != -1)) {
       ErrorMsg += "- Email Address\n For example: yourname@domain.com\n"
   }

       if ( ErrorMsg.length >
...[SNIP]...

3.3. https://www.webimmune.net/instructions.asp previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	https://www.webimmune.net
Path:	/instructions.asp

Issue detail

The following email address was disclosed in the response:

Virus_Research@avertlabs.com

Request

GET /instructions.asp HTTP/1.1
Host: www.webimmune.net
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: https://www.webimmune.net/default.asp
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/13.0.782.112 Safari/535.1
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
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: ASPSESSIONIDQSAAATBS=PHEJFPBCHBLFLIIPLLOMNJDD

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:13:41 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Content-Length: 4821
Content-Type: text/html
Cache-control: private

<html>
<head>
<title>Instructions</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/main_global.css">

...[SNIP]...
<a href="mailto: Virus_Research@avertlabs.com">
Virus_Research@avertlabs.com</a>
...[SNIP]...

3.4. https://www.webimmune.net/preregistration.asp previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	https://www.webimmune.net
Path:	/preregistration.asp

Issue detail

The following email address was disclosed in the response:

Virus_Research@avertlabs.com

Request

GET /preregistration.asp HTTP/1.1
Host: www.webimmune.net
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: https://www.webimmune.net/default.asp
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/13.0.782.112 Safari/535.1
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
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
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:12:13 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Content-Length: 9682
Content-Type: text/html
Cache-control: private

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
   <head>
       <title>McAfee Avert
...[SNIP]...
<A href="mailto:Virus_Research@avertlabs.com">Virus_Research@avertlabs.com
                       </A>
...[SNIP]...

3.5. https://www.webimmune.net/registration.asp previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	https://www.webimmune.net
Path:	/registration.asp

Issue detail

The following email address was disclosed in the response:

yourname@domain.com

Request

GET /registration.asp HTTP/1.1
Host: www.webimmune.net
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: https://www.webimmune.net/preregistration.asp
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/13.0.782.112 Safari/535.1
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
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: ASPSESSIONIDQSAAATBS=PHEJFPBCHBLFLIIPLLOMNJDD

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:12:29 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Content-Length: 39518
Content-Type: text/html
Expires: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:12:29 GMT
Cache-control: private

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
   <head>
       <title>McAfee Avert
...[SNIP]...

TheForm.Email_Address.value.indexOf ('yourname') != -1 ||
TheForm.Email_Address.value.indexOf ('@domain.com') != -1)
   ErrorMsg += "- Email Address\n For example: yourname@domain.com\n"
if (TheForm.Email_Address.value.toLowerCase() != TheForm.Confirm_Address.value.toLowerCase()) {
ErrorMsg += "- Confirm Address\n Does not match the Email Address\n"

...[SNIP]...

4. Cacheable HTTPS response previous
There are 7 instances of this issue:

/TempUnavailable.asp
/default.asp
/default.asp/
/forgetpassword.asp
/instructions.asp
/preregistration.asp
/registration.asp

Issue description

Unless directed otherwise, browsers may store a local cached copy of content received from web servers. Some browsers, including Internet Explorer, cache content accessed via HTTPS. If sensitive information in application responses is stored in the local cache, then this may be retrieved by other users who have access to the same computer at a future time.

Issue remediation

The application should return caching directives instructing browsers not to store local copies of any sensitive data. Often, this can be achieved by configuring the web server to prevent caching for relevant paths within the web root. Alternatively, most web development platforms allow you to control the server's caching directives from within individual scripts. Ideally, the web server should return the following HTTP headers in all responses containing sensitive content:

Cache-control: no-store
Pragma: no-cache

4.1. https://www.webimmune.net/TempUnavailable.asp previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	https://www.webimmune.net
Path:	/TempUnavailable.asp

Request

Response

4.2. https://www.webimmune.net/default.asp previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	https://www.webimmune.net
Path:	/default.asp

Request

GET /default.asp HTTP/1.1
Host: www.webimmune.net
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)
Connection: close

Response

4.3. https://www.webimmune.net/default.asp/ previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	https://www.webimmune.net
Path:	/default.asp/

Request

GET /default.asp/ HTTP/1.1
Host: www.webimmune.net
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)
Connection: close

Response

4.4. https://www.webimmune.net/forgetpassword.asp previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	https://www.webimmune.net
Path:	/forgetpassword.asp

Request

Response

4.5. https://www.webimmune.net/instructions.asp previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	https://www.webimmune.net
Path:	/instructions.asp

Request

Response

4.6. https://www.webimmune.net/preregistration.asp previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	https://www.webimmune.net
Path:	/preregistration.asp

Request

Response

4.7. https://www.webimmune.net/registration.asp previous

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	https://www.webimmune.net
Path:	/registration.asp

Request

Response

Report generated by XSS.CX at Wed Aug 24 11:20:15 GMT-06:00 2011.