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SESSION RIDING a Widespread Vulnerability in Today's Web Applications Whitepaper SESSION RIDING A Widespread Vulnerability in Today's Web Applications Thomas Schreiber, SecureNet GmbH, Dec 2004 SecureNet GmbH - Münchner Technologiezentrum - Frankfurter Ring 193a - D-80807 München www.securenet.de - [email protected] - Phone +49/89/32133-600 Whitepaper – Session Riding SecureNet GmbH – 2 T ABLE OF C ONTENTS 1 Abstract .............................................................................................................................3 2 What is Session Riding?.......................................................................................................3 3 How Session Riding Works ..................................................................................................4 3.1 How Cookies and Session IDs work................................................................4 3.2 The Threat............................................................................................................5 3.3 Where is the Vulnerability? ................................................................................6 3.4 Non-form-based Authentication Methods......................................................6 3.5 Summary ...............................................................................................................7 4 What makes things even worse...........................................................................................7 4.1 Vulnerable GET-Requests .................................................................................7 4.1.1 The IMG-Tag ............................................................................................7 4.1.2 The worst case ...........................................................................................8 4.1.3 IMG-Tags and Redirection......................................................................8 4.1.4 Some observations ....................................................................................9 4.2 Legal aspects.........................................................................................................9 5 Threat Scenarios...............................................................................................................10 5.1 Administration Applications............................................................................10 5.2 DSL-Routers ......................................................................................................10 5.3 Corporate Webmail and Sidestepping of Sender-ID ...................................11 5.4 Password Reset ..................................................................................................11 5.5 Custom Web Applications ...............................................................................11 5.6 Intranets..............................................................................................................11 5.7 Single Sign-On ...................................................................................................11 5.8 WebDAV and other Http-Extensions ...........................................................12 5.9 One-time-Token and TANs ............................................................................12 6 Countermeasures .............................................................................................................13 6.1 Solution 1: Use secrets......................................................................................13 6.2 Solution 2: Do URL-Rewriting........................................................................13 6.3 What does not help ...........................................................................................14 6.3.1 Confirmation Pages ................................................................................14 6.3.2 POST instead of GET............................................................................15 6.4 Workaround at the client side..........................................................................15 7 Conclusion........................................................................................................................15 8 About SecureNet...............................................................................................................16 9 References .......................................................................................................................16 Whitepaper – Session Riding SecureNet GmbH – 3 1 A BSTRACT In this paper we describe an issue that was raised in 2001 under the name of Cross-Site Request Forgeries (CSRF) [1]. It seems, though, that it has been ne- glected by the software development and Web Application Security community, as it is not part of recent Web Application Security discussions, nor is it men- tioned in OWASP's Top Ten [2] or the like. After having frequently observed this vulnerability in our Web Application Security assessments of custom Web appli- cations, we started to examine various public Web applications and other browser-based applications: — popular (commercial) Web sites — popular browser-based console applications such as administration tools for databases, servers, etc. — browser-based administration clients of hardware devices — webmail sites and open source and commercial webmail solutions We have found out that this vulnerability is present in many of those sites, ser- vices and products, some of which perform sensitive tasks. Actually, the list of af- fected companies contains well-known big players. Our analysis has led us to the conclusion that this vulnerability is the most widespread one in today's Web ap- plications right after Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). Even worse, in some scenarios it has to be considered much more dangerous than XSS. We feel that a concise description of this issue is necessary, along with a descrip- tion of scenarios that highlight the danger to all browser-based applications that do not provide appropriate counter-measures, be it Intranet, Internet or console applications. In this paper, we explain this vulnerability in depth, show that it may be used unnoticed by the victim, describe potential threats, and finally give hints on how to make Web applications safe from such attacks. We prefer to call this issue Session Riding which more figuratively illustrates what is going on. 2 W HAT IS S ESSION R IDING? In short: with Session Riding it is possible to send commands to a Web applica- tion on behalf of the targeted user by just sending this user an email or tricking him into visiting a (not per se malicious but) specially crafted website. Among the attacks that may be carried out by means of Session Riding are deleting user data, executing online transactions like bids or orders, sending spam, triggering com- mands inside an intranet from the Internet, changing system and network con- figurations, or even opening the firewall. Whitepaper – Session Riding SecureNet GmbH – 4 3 H OW S ESSION R IDING W ORKS 3.1 How Cookies and Session IDs work In order to understand Session Riding let's first illustrate the main principle it is based on by having a look at cookies. Cookies have a lot of subtle properties. The one that forms the basis for Session Riding is a very simple one. In short and a little simplified: The browser sends a cookie that was set by some site A along with every further request to site A. If this mechanism is looked at in more depth, more conditions have to be met: the path that is accessed must match the path the cookie was defined for, the life- time of the cookie must not be expired, etc. We can ignore them for most of the following considerations, as they are not critical elements of the underlying prin- ciple. Let's illustrate a typical use of cookies in the context of form based user authenti- cation by an example: We look at a bidding application at https://www.server.tld/myApp where a buyer logs in and submits offers. Let's assume that this application uses cookies as the carrier for the session ID. Suppose that the user has successfully logged in, so that a cookie is already set in his browser. Then, he fills out the form to make his bid: When the user hits the Submit button, a request (in this case a GET request) like the one below is sent to the server: Whitepaper – Session Riding SecureNet GmbH – 5 The cookie SESSIONID=123456789 is automatically added to the request. Thus, the application is able to recognize the user, confirm that he has authenticated be- fore, and carry out the transaction based on the user's data, i.e. to submit a bid for an article with no. 1122 at a value of 100 EUR on behalf of the user who has previously logged in. For those that are not so familiar with session management, let's point out one important thing concerning session IDs: after having logged in, the application recognizes the user solely by the session ID that the browser sends with the re- quest. It does not ask for the user ID and password again. (As a consequence, if a valid session ID is acquired by another person, in general this person has access to the user's account in the application. Nevertheless, Session Riding has nothing to do with this so-called Session Hijacking.) 3.2 The Threat Although it is very simple, let's derive the issue that is behind Session Riding step by step: Where does the GET request that is sent in this example come from? It is gener- ated by the browser after the user has selected the article, filled in his price and clicked on the Submit button, of course. This is certainly the regular case, but is it technically the only
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