XSS, Mobile, DORK, Cross Site Scripting, CWE-79, CAPEC-86, foxnews.mobi

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

Report generated by XSS.CX at Sun Apr 17 17:29:55 CDT 2011.

XSS.CX Research investigates and reports on security vulnerabilities embedded in Web Applications and Products used in wide-scale deployment.

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1. Cross-site scripting (reflected)

XSS in foxnews.mobi, DORK, XSS, Cross Site Scripting, CWE-79, CAPEC-86

2. Cookie without HttpOnly flag set

3. Cross-domain script include

4. Content type incorrectly stated

1. Cross-site scripting (reflected) next

Summary

Severity:	Low
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://www.foxnews.mobi
Path:	/scitech/quickPage.html

Issue detail

The value of the Referer HTTP header is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload e0f16"><script>alert(1)</script>01b5f30ac2b was submitted in the Referer HTTP header. 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.

Because the user data that is copied into the response is submitted within a request header, the application's behaviour is not trivial to exploit in an attack against another user. In the past, methods have existed of using client-side technologies such as Flash to cause another user to make a request containing an arbitrary HTTP header. If you can use such a technique, you can probably leverage it to exploit the XSS flaw. This limitation partially mitigates the impact of the vulnerability.

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.

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.

Request

GET /scitech/quickPage.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foxnews.mobi
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)
Connection: close
Referer: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=e0f16"><script>alert(1)</script>01b5f30ac2b

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Cache-Control: no-transform
Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
Content-Language: en-US
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2011 20:29:33 GMT
Content-Length: 23560
Connection: close
Set-Cookie: DACustomerId=9c70069f-13c4-45c3-9b51-fc8c596273d6; Domain=www.foxnews.mobi; Expires=Tue, 17-Apr-2012 02:29:33 GMT
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=332941072B451DC57C916ABE1D204657.swiftweb-red; Path=/
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=332941072B451DC57C916ABE1D204657.swiftweb-red; Domain=www.foxnews.mobi
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=332941072B451DC57C916ABE1D204657.swiftweb-red; Expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:10 GMT; Path=/

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.1//EN" "http://www.openmobilealliance.org/tech/DTD/xhtml-mobile11.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>FOX News
...[SNIP]...
<img id="omniture_link" src="http://foxnewsmobile.112.2O7.net/b/ss/foxnewsmobile/5.1/1303072173704?pageName=Home&r=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=e0f16"><script>alert(1)</script>01b5f30ac2b&c1=Home&v1=D=c1&c2=Home&v2=D=c2&c41=Sun&v41=D=c41&c42=1615&v42=D=c42&vid=9c70069f-13c4-45c3-9b51-fc8c596273d6&server=D=User-Agent&ev=event1" alt="" width="5" height="5"/>
...[SNIP]...

2. Cookie without HttpOnly flag set previous next

Summary

Severity:	Low
Confidence:	Firm
Host:	http://www.foxnews.mobi
Path:	/scitech/quickPage.html

Issue detail

The following cookies were issued by the application and do not have the HttpOnly flag set:

JSESSIONID=A8DFF621324AB2E86E7843DC97B6078E.swiftweb-red; Path=/
JSESSIONID=A8DFF621324AB2E86E7843DC97B6078E.swiftweb-red; Domain=www.foxnews.mobi
JSESSIONID=A8DFF621324AB2E86E7843DC97B6078E.swiftweb-red; Expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:10 GMT; Path=/
DACustomerId=a4adf1c9-18a3-4a9c-9513-ede31a97f73b; Domain=www.foxnews.mobi; Expires=Tue, 17-Apr-2012 02:29:27 GMT

The highlighted cookies appear to contain session tokens, which may increase the risk associated with this issue. You should review the contents of the cookies to determine their 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

GET /scitech/quickPage.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foxnews.mobi
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
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Cache-Control: no-transform
Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
Content-Language: en-US
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2011 20:29:27 GMT
Content-Length: 23477
Connection: close
Set-Cookie: DACustomerId=a4adf1c9-18a3-4a9c-9513-ede31a97f73b; Domain=www.foxnews.mobi; Expires=Tue, 17-Apr-2012 02:29:27 GMT
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=A8DFF621324AB2E86E7843DC97B6078E.swiftweb-red; Path=/
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=A8DFF621324AB2E86E7843DC97B6078E.swiftweb-red; Domain=www.foxnews.mobi
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=A8DFF621324AB2E86E7843DC97B6078E.swiftweb-red; Expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:10 GMT; Path=/

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.1//EN" "http://www.openmobilealliance.org/tech/DTD/xhtml-mobile11.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>FOX News
...[SNIP]...

3. Cross-domain script include previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://www.foxnews.mobi
Path:	/scitech/quickPage.html

Issue detail

The response dynamically includes the following script from another domain:

http://a.ringleaderdigital.com/adtag.js

Issue background

When an application includes a script from an external domain, this script is executed by the browser within the security context of the invoking application. The script can therefore do anything that the application's own scripts can do, such as accessing application data and performing actions within the context of the current user.

If you include a script from an external domain, then you are trusting that domain with the data and functionality of your application, and you are trusting the domain's own security to prevent an attacker from modifying the script to perform malicious actions within your application.

Issue remediation

Scripts should not be included from untrusted domains. If you have a requirement which a third-party script appears to fulfil, then you should ideally copy the contents of that script onto your own domain and include it from there. If that is not possible (e.g. for licensing reasons) then you should consider reimplementing the script's functionality within your own code.

Request

GET /scitech/quickPage.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foxnews.mobi
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)
Connection: close

Response

4. Content type incorrectly stated previous

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Firm
Host:	http://www.foxnews.mobi
Path:	/favicon.ico

Issue detail

The response contains the following Content-type statement:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

The response states that it contains plain text. However, it actually appears to contain a PNG image.

Issue background

If a web response specifies an incorrect content type, then browsers may process the response in unexpected ways. If the specified content type is a renderable text-based format, then the browser will usually attempt to parse and render the response in that format. If the specified type is an image format, then the browser will usually detect the anomaly and will analyse the actual content and attempt to determine its MIME type. Either case can lead to unexpected results, and if the content contains any user-controllable data may lead to cross-site scripting or other client-side vulnerabilities.

In most cases, the presence of an incorrect content type statement does not constitute a security flaw, particularly if the response contains static content. You should review the contents of the response and the context in which it appears to determine whether any vulnerability exists.

Issue remediation

For every response containing a message body, the application should include a single Content-type header which correctly and unambiguously states the MIME type of the content in the response body.

Request

GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foxnews.mobi
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Accept: */*
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.204 Safari/534.16
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: preferredMarkup=xhtml; JSESSIONID=BA757D9D4477B719FD542062E0DC2396.swiftweb-red

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
ETag: W/"140-1297460046000"
Last-Modified: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 21:34:06 GMT
Content-Length: 140
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2011 22:28:39 GMT
Connection: close

.PNG
.
...IHDR.............(-.S....tEXtSoftware.Adobe ImageReadyq.e<....PLTE.......g......tRNS.@..f....IDATx.b`.... ......;BBK....IEND.B`.

Report generated by XSS.CX at Sun Apr 17 17:29:55 CDT 2011.