RE: XML File Inclusion and Path Traversal Attacks (was RE: XML Port Scanning)

["Nish Bhalla" <nish () securitycompass com>]

I talked about this and other attack vectors based on some of our research
and some of the other material we gathered. The presentation is available
under resources on our website or through the following link
http://www.securitycompass.com/resources/SecurityCompass-Web%20Services.pdf.


Unfortunately the majority of the organizations haven't followed this
thought process and still end up enabling "SYSTEM", which is the root cause
for most of these attacks. In some implementations "SYSTEM" is enabled by
default however, in others where it is not enabled by default, because of
lack of knowledge on the impact of this enabling, we have seen it being
enabled by dev. This technique can not only be used to port scan but also
browse internal sites, shares and browse the internet using the DTD.

It is great to see that the community is putting out such papers to get the
momentum going on how insecure web services are making our infrastructure if
not configured properly. 


Nish Bhalla
 
-----Original Message-----
From: listbounce () securityfocus com [mailto:listbounce () securityfocus com] On
Behalf Of Mark Mcdonald
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 9:19 PM
To: Jan P. Monsch; Paul Theriault; colin.wong () sift com au
Cc: pen-test () securityfocus com; webappsec () securityfocus com
Subject: RE: XML File Inclusion and Path Traversal Attacks (was RE: XML Port
Scanning)

I can see this problem getting progressively worse with the gradual adoption
of XML-based document formats.

For example, if an attacker knows the path (either by traversal as mentioned
below or through some other exposed mechanism), it would be trivial to
include the standard DTDs for the OpenDocument & MS suite of document types.

Kudos to both teams for this research though, excellent stuff

> -----Original Message-----
> From: listbounce () securityfocus com 
> [mailto:listbounce () securityfocus com]
> On Behalf Of Jan P. Monsch
> Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 3:28 AM
> To: 'Paul Theriault'; colin.wong () sift com au
> Cc: pen-test () securityfocus com; webappsec () securityfocus com
> Subject: XML File Inclusion and Path Traversal Attacks (was RE: XML 
> Port
> Scanning)
>
> Hi Paul, Hi Colin
>
> Thank you for your nice paper on XML port scanning. The attack scheme 
> you are describing is not new. It was already described in Oct 2002 by 
> Gregory Steuck as "XML eXternal Entity Attack" (XXE):
> http://www.securiteam.com/securitynews/6D0100A5PU.html
>
> Actually the attack scheme is more potent than you imagine. Depending 
> on the application it is possible to include server-side files into 
> XML documents.
> If e.g. the content of the processed XML document is stored in 
> database and it is possible to read the database through the same or 
> other web service functions or web application then the file content 
> is disclosed.
>
> Due to the fact that directories can often be read just like a file, 
> as it is the case in Java, it is possible to traverse directories and 
> to read files without guessing paths.
>
> So far I have not succeeded in including arbitrary XML documents since 
> they often violate DTD definitions of the surrounding XML. But if the 
> DTD allows further XML tags in a field extraction of XML documents 
> should also be possible. But in general my experience shows that Java 
> property files, /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow or even PEM-encoded SSL key 
> material pose no problems.
>
> Actually XML file inclusion is often practiced by Java web application 
> developers and system engineers to include external parts in web.xml 
> and Tomcat server.xml configuration files.
>
> The key to solving this issue, as mentioned in the paper, is to harden 
> the XML parser by setting restrictive entity parsing options and to 
> implement custom entity resolvers. Additionally I recommend running 
> the web application with a low-privileged user account and restricting 
> read and write access for this user across the operating system. For 
> the paranoid among us who have deployed a Java based container should 
> consider restricting file and network access through Java policies and 
> security managers.
>
> Samples request and response can be found on my web site:
> http://www.iplosion.com/?p=36
>
> Kind regards
> Jan
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: listbounce () securityfocus com 
> [mailto:listbounce () securityfocus com]
> On
> Behalf Of Paul Theriault
> Sent: Mittwoch, 27. September 2006 06:19
> To: webappsec () securityfocus com
> Subject: XML Port Scanning
>
> SIFT has released a new Intelligence Report that provides a discussion 
> on a new network reconnaissance technique, using XML for completing 
> remote port scans that effectively bypass a perimeter firewall. The 
> technique utilises properties of XML parsers to perform the scanning 
> of systems, and while the technique relies on some reasonably specific 
> implementation details in order to be exploitable remotely, it is 
> potentially applicable to any application that accepts XML document 
> inputs.
>
> Several workarounds exist and have been detailed in this paper and the 
> technique does not offer the ability to perform advanced 
> fingerprinting or analysis of the underlying operating system of 
> hosts. However, this technique demonstrates the danger that 
> inadequately configured XML parsers can pose to an organisation and 
> highlights the inability of traditional network security devices to handle
application-level threats.
> The report is available for download from the SIFT website:
> http://www.sift.com.au/36/172/xml-port-scanning-bypassing-restrictive-
> perime
> ter-firewalls.htm
>
>
> Regards,
> Paul Theriault
> www.sift.com.au
>
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