qDefense Advisory Number QDAV-2001-7-3 - Interactive Story does not properly validate the contents of a hidden field entitled "next". Setting that field to the name of a file, and using double dots and poison nulls, an attacker can cause Interactive Story to display the contents of any file. Exploit URL included.
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Interactive Story File Disclosure Vulnerability
qDefense Advisory Number QDAV-2001-7-3
Product: Interactive Story
Vendor: Valerie Mates (http://www.valeriemates.com)
Severity: Remote; Attacker may read arbitrary file
Versions Affected: Version 1.3
Vendor Status: Vendor contacted; has released new version, 1.4, which is
not vulnerable
Cause: Failure to validate input
In Short: Interactive Story does not properly validate the contents of a
hidden field entitled "next". By setting that field to the name of a file,
and using double dots and poison nulls, an attacker can cause Interactive
Story to display the contents of any file.
The current version of this document is available at
http://qDefense.com/Advisories/QDAV-2001-7-3.html.
Details:
Interactive Story contains the following lines:
$nextfile = "$story_dir/$in{'next'}.txt";
...
elsif ((-e $nextfile) && ($in{'submit'} eq "")) {
...
while (<STORY>) {
print $_;
}
...
}
If an attacker sets the "next" field to something like
../../../../../../../../../../etc/passwd%00, Interactive Story will open
and display the password file. This technique can be used to display any
file that the web server has permission to read.
Solution:
Valerie Mates has released an upgrade, version 1.4, which strips special
characters from the "next" field.
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of Computer Modeling Corp.
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