XSS, Reflected Cross Site Scripting, CWE-79, CAPEC-86, about.bankofamerica.com

Report generated by XSS.Cx at Mon Aug 06 09:10:46 EDT 2012.

Summary

Severity:	High
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://about.bankofamerica.com
Path:	/partnering-locally/harman-center-for-the-arts.html

Issue detail

The name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter is copied into an HTML comment. The payload 412c5--><script>alert(1)</script>bfba425e694 was submitted in the name of an arbitrarily supplied request 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.

Note that a redirection occurred between the attack request and the response containing the echoed input. It is necessary to follow this redirection for the attack to succeed. When the attack is carried out via a browser, the redirection will be followed automatically.

Remediation detail

Echoing user-controllable data within HTML comment tags does not prevent XSS attacks if the user is able to close the comment or use other techniques to introduce scripts within the comment 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 organization. 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 organization 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 organization 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 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 sanitized.
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 /partnering-locally/harman-center-for-the-arts.html?412c5--><script>alert(1)</script>bfba425e694=1 HTTP/1.1
Host: about.bankofamerica.com
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)
Connection: close

Response (redirected)

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Last-Modified: Mon, 06 Aug 2012 01:06:57 GMT
Expires: Mon, 06 Aug 2012 01:06:58 GMT
Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2012 01:06:57 GMT
Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
Cache-Control: max-age=2419200
Vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=967F62F1A6E6FC9C2FA1BF579AF65F9A; Path=/; HttpOnly
Set-Cookie: NSC_bcpvu.cbolpgbnfsjdb.dpn*80=ffffffff09c9029d45525d5f4f58455e445a4a423660;expires=Mon, 06-Aug-2012 01:08:58 GMT;path=/
X-Cache: MISS from 12.120.79.28
Via: 1.1 12.120.79.28:80 (cache/2.6.2.3.14.ATT)
Connection: close

<!DOCTYPE html>

<script>alert(1)</script>bfba425e694=1/harman-center-for-the-arts.html">
...[SNIP]...

Report generated by XSS.Cx at Mon Aug 06 09:10:46 EDT 2012.