Re: New Whitepaper - "Second-order Code Injection Attacks"

["Jeff Williams" <jeff.williams () aspectsecurity com>]

Gunter,

Thanks for the comprehensive treatment of this class of vulnerabilities. The
OWASP Top Ten paper breaks down XSS flaws into "stored" and "reflected"
categories, but your paper is far closer to a complete theory about all the
ways that tainted data can undermine the security of applications.

--Jeff

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Crispin Cowan" <crispin () immunix com>
To: "Gunter Ollmann" <gunter () ngssoftware com>
Cc: <bugtraq () securityfocus com>
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2004 8:45 PM
Subject: Re: New Whitepaper - "Second-order Code Injection Attacks"


> I found an instance of this class of vulnerability in 1998 where an
> attacker could inject code into the "locate" database, which would later
> be executed when root tried to do a locate on some path name
> http://msgs.securepoint.com/cgi-bin/get/bugtraq/601/1.html
>
> Mine was not the first such"secondary code injection" attack. It was a
> consequence of exploring a PoC by MiG for a buffer overflow
> vulnerability in bash, where in a tall directory tree would overflow
> bash when you try to cd into that directory and you have the pwd set to
> be part of your prompt. At the time, it did not occur to me that it was
> a special kind of buffer overflow.
>
> Crispin
>
> Gunter Ollmann wrote:
>
> > Hi list,
> >
> > NGS Software is pleased to make available a new whitepaper about
> > second-order code injection attacks.
> >
> > Abstract:
> > "Many forms of code injection targeted at web-based applications (for
> > instance cross-site scripting and SQL injection) rely upon the
instantaneous
> > execution of the embedded code to carry out the attack (e.g. stealing a
> > user's current session information or executing a modified SQL query).
In
> > some cases it may be possible for an attacker to inject their malicious
code
> > into a data storage area that may be executed at a later date or time.
> > Depending upon the nature of the application and the way the malicious
data
> > is stored or rendered, the attacker may be able to conduct a second-order
> > code injection attack.
> >
> > A second-order code injection attack can be classified as the process in
> > which malicious code is injected into a web-based application and not
> > immediately executed, but instead is stored by the application (e.g.
> > temporarily cached, logged, stored in a database) and then later
retrieved,
> > rendered and executed by the victim."
> >
> > The paper can be accessed from:
> > http://www.nextgenss.com/papers/SecondOrderCodeInjection.pdf
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Gunter
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------
> > G u n t e r   O l l m a n n,            MSc(Hons), BSc
> > Professional Services Director
> >
> > Next  Generation  Security  Software  Ltd.
> > First Floor, 52 Throwley Way  Tel: +44 (0)208 401 0089
> > Sutton, Surrey, SM1 4BF, UK   Fax: +44 (0)208 401 0076
> > http://www.nextgenss.com
> > ------------------------------------------------------ 
>
> -- 
> Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.  http://immunix.com/~crispin/
> CTO, Immunix          http://immunix.com