Vulnerability Development mailing list archives
Re: Web session tracking security prob. Vulnerable: IIS and ColdFusion (maybe others)
From: "Jeff Jancula" <Jeff () Jancula com>
Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 01:38:11 -0400
As best I can tell, CFID is not the user ID - as it is usually the same for all visitors to the web site. I can only guess that it's more like a server ID. CFTOKEN is the actual session number. Note: These two cookies (or parameters) are for ColdFusion ONLY. IIS uses something similar called ASPSESSIONID. With ASPSESSIONID, the first group of 8 characters is the same for all visitors. Again, I believe this portion of ASPSESSIONID is a server identifier, and the remaining 16 characters make up the actual session number. ColdFusion chose to separate the two, whereas IIS chose to combine them. If I send you a link similar to https://someserver.com?CFID=101&CFTOKEN=99999, and then later we both visit the web site, using the same (or similar) links; the server will consider us to be the same user session. If I time it right, then I should wait for YOU to login, so I don't have to. In effect, I can become your clone (in a web sense). Jeff ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lincoln Yeoh" <lyeoh () pop jaring my> To: "Jeff Jancula" <Jeff () Jancula com>; <vuln-dev () securityfocus com> Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2001 1:35 AM Subject: Re: Web session tracking security prob. Vulnerable: IIS and ColdFusion (maybe others)
At 02:25 PM 29-08-2001 -0400, Jeff Jancula wrote:BACKGROUND: When a Internet browser user visits IIS or ColdFusion hosted web sites,the web server issues browser commands similar to:(for IIS) Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONID=BBBBBBBBABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP (for CF) Set-Cookie: CFID=123 (for CF) Set-Cookie: CFTOKEN=4567890 The browser stores and returns the "ASPSESSIONID" or "CFID/CFTOKEN" valueswith each subsequent request to the web server. IIS and ColdFusion use these values to identify and track each user.What does CFID=123 mean to cold fusion? Is that the user/session ID? Does that mean an attacker can just send CFID=123 and CFTOKEN=ANYTHING and Cold Fusion will think it's the same user/session? If it does then it's a very big problem. If it doesn't, then it may not be a problem unless your application assumes that just having a session means it's a valid user. Cheerio, Link.
Current thread:
- Web session tracking security prob. Vulnerable: IIS and ColdFusion (maybe others) Jeff Jancula (Aug 29)
- Re: Web session tracking security prob. Vulnerable: IIS and ColdFusion (maybe others) Michael J. Cannon (Aug 29)
- Re: Web session tracking security prob. Vulnerable: IIS and ColdFusion (maybe others) Lincoln Yeoh (Aug 30)
- Re: Web session tracking security prob. Vulnerable: IIS and ColdFusion (maybe others) Jeff Jancula (Aug 30)
- Re: Web session tracking security prob. Vulnerable: IIS and ColdFusion (maybe others) nagilum (Aug 30)
- Re: Web session tracking security prob. Vulnerable: IIS and ColdFusion (maybe others) Marc Slemko (Aug 30)