Full Disclosure mailing list archives

Re: XSS vulnerabilities in Google.com


From: n3td3v <xploitable () gmail com>
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:00:54 +0000

You couldn't help but bash other peoples Google and Yahoo
vulnerabilities. When you find your own, come back and bash other
people. Until then, sit down, and learn from other peoples work.

XSS will always remain part of the Full-Disclosure list if little
"GroundZero Security" like it or not!

/sarc on
I hope you enjoy your continued rants about other peoples work, you'll
go far in your career. /sarc off

On 12/21/05, GroundZero Security <fd () g-0 org> wrote:
are we starting to post vulnerabilities in specific websites now rather than
daemons/clients etc. ?
i mean there are thousands of websites which are vulnerable to xss,sql
injection or worse because of their
custom scripts. in my opinion this should be posted to the website owners if
you feel like, but its of no real use
to the security community. hm another thing i'm wondering about is, is it
legal to just audit a website without
asking the owner if its ok ? how will he know its not a real attack? ok as
for xss there cant be much harm done
to the server itself, but what if, for example, you cause a DoS through
testing certain variables for overflows ?


----- Original Message -----
From: Watchfire Research
To: full-disclosure () lists grok org uk
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 1:58 PM
Subject: [Full-disclosure] XSS vulnerabilities in Google.com



//=====================>> Security Advisory <<=====================//



---------------------------------------------------------------------

XSS vulnerabilities in Google.com

---------------------------------------------------------------------



--[ Author: Yair Amit , Watchfire Corporation http://www.watchfire.com

--[ Discovery Date: 15/11/2005

--[ Initial Vendor Response: 15/11/2005

--[ Issue solved: 01/12/2005

--[ Website: www.google.com

--[ Severity: High



--[ Summary



Two XSS vulnerabilities were identified in the Google.com website,

which allow an attacker to impersonate legitimate members of Google's

services or to mount a phishing attack.

Although Google uses common XSS countermeasures, a successful attack

is possible, when using UTF-7 encoded payloads.



--[ Background



Google's URL redirection script

---------------------------------------------------------------------



The script (http://www.google.com/url?q=...) is normally used for

redirecting the browser from Google's website to other sites.



For example, the following request will redirect the browser

to http://www.watchfire.com :

      -
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.watchfire.com



When the parameter (q) is passed to the script with illegal format

(The format seems to be: http://domain), a "403 Forbidden" page

returns to the user, informing that the query was illegal.

The parameter's value appears in the html returned to the user.



If http://www.google.com/url?q=USER_INPUT is requested, the
text in

the "403 Forbidden" response would be:

      - "Your client does not have permission to get URL

      /url?q=USER_INPUT from this server."



The server response lacks charset encoding enforcement, such as:

* Response headers: "Content-Type: text/html; charset=[encoding]".

* Response body: "<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" (...)
charset=[encoding]/>".



Google's 404 NOT FOUND mechanism

---------------------------------------------------------------------



When requesting a page which doesn't exist under www.google.com, a

404 NOT FOUND response is returned to the user, with the original

path requested.



If http://www.google.com/NOTFOUND is requested, the following text

appears in the response:

"Not Found

The requested URL /NOTFOUND was not found on this server."



The server response lacks charset encoding enforcement, such as:

* Response headers: "Content-Type: text/html; charset=[encoding]".

* Response body: "<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" (...)
charset=[encoding]/>".



--[ XSS vulnerabilities



While the aforementioned mechanisms (URL redirection script,

404 NOT FOUND) escape common characters used for XSS, such as <>

(triangular parenthesis) and apostrophes, it fails to handle

hazardous UTF-7 encoded payloads.



Therefore, when sending an XSS attack payload, encoded in UTF-7, the

payload will return in the response without being altered.



For the attack to succeed (script execution), the victims browser

should treat the XSS payload as UTF-7.



--[ IE charset encoding Auto-Selection



If 'Encoding' is set to 'Auto-Select', and Internet-Explorer finds a

UTF-7 string in the first 4096 characters of the response's body,

it will set the charset encoding to UTF-7 automatically, unless a

certain charset encoding is already enforced.



This automatic encoding selection feature makes it possible to mount

UTF-7 XSS attacks on Google.com.



--[ Solution



Google solved the aforementioned issues at 01/12/2005, by using

character encoding enforcement.



--[ Acknowledgement



The author would like to commend the Google Security Team for their

cooperation and communication regarding this vulnerability.





________________________________


_______________________________________________
Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
Charter:
http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html
Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/


_______________________________________________
Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
Charter:
http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html
Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/


_______________________________________________
Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html
Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/


Current thread: