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

Report generated by XSS.CX at Fri Apr 01 10:24:56 CDT 2011.

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1. HTTP header injection


1. HTTP header injection

Summary

Severity:   High
Confidence:   Certain
Host:   http://www.wholikesu.net
Path:   /favicon.ico

Issue detail

The value of REST URL parameter 1 is copied into the Set-Cookie response header. The payload db14a%0d%0a4c552285d3 was submitted in the REST URL parameter 1. This caused a response containing an injected HTTP header.

Issue background

HTTP header injection vulnerabilities arise when user-supplied data is copied into a response header in an unsafe way. If an attacker can inject newline characters into the header, then they can inject new HTTP headers and also, by injecting an empty line, break out of the headers into the message body and write arbitrary content into the application's response.

Various kinds of attack can be delivered via HTTP header injection vulnerabilities. Any attack that can be delivered via cross-site scripting can usually be delivered via header injection, because the attacker can construct a request which causes arbitrary JavaScript to appear within the response body. Further, it is sometimes possible to leverage header injection vulnerabilities to poison the cache of any proxy server via which users access the application. Here, an attacker sends a crafted request which results in a "split" response containing arbitrary content. If the proxy server can be manipulated to associate the injected response with another URL used within the application, then the attacker can perform a "stored" attack against this URL which will compromise other users who request that URL in future.

Issue remediation

If possible, applications should avoid copying user-controllable data into HTTP response headers. If this is unavoidable, then the data should be strictly validated to prevent header injection attacks. In most situations, it will be appropriate to allow only short alphanumeric strings to be copied into headers, and any other input should be rejected. At a minimum, input containing any characters with ASCII codes less than 0x20 should be rejected.

Request

GET /db14a%0d%0a4c552285d3 HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: curl/7.21.0 (amd64-pc-win32) libcurl/7.21.0 OpenSSL/0.9.8o zlib/1.2.3
Host: www.wholikesu.net
Accept: */*
Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive
Expect: <script>alert(1)</script>

Response

HTTP/1.0 301 Moved Permanently
Content-Length: 0
Location: /cookie_test.html
Set-Cookie: cookie_test=1; path=/; Expires=Mon, 28-Nov-2011 09:10:11 GMT
Set-Cookie: query=/db14a
4c552285d3; path=/;
Set-Cookie: referer=; path=/;
Connection: Keep-Alive

Report generated by XSS.CX at Fri Apr 01 10:24:56 CDT 2011.