WebApp Sec mailing list archives

Re: Exploits from command line?


From: Antoine Martin <antoine () nagafix co uk>
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:41:51 +0000

On Tue, 2005-01-18 at 12:49 -0800, Benjamin Livshits wrote:
I've come upon some cases in large Web-base applications where the
errors such SQL injection and XSS are found in codes that are not
accessible by Web users. For instance, some applications include a few
sloppily written maintenance programs that are invoked from the command
line as well as Ant tasks that are supposed to be invoked by the
application administrator.

On the surface, these errors are probably pretty irrelevant, as an
attacker that has the permissions to run the application from the
command line is already in some sense in the system and can cause more
damage elsewhere. Is this the right assessment or are there situations
where the ability to perform SQL injections from the command line is in
fact somehow dangerous?
There are many cases where the local attack can be used for privilege
escalation. Depends on far too many things to list here. (What user runs
the injected code, can you inject code for later use by another user,
etc)
But without knowing the application you're talking about, it is
impossible to say.

Antoine

Thanks,
-Ben



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