Westpoint Security Advisory --------------------------- Title: Multiple Browser Cookie Injection Vulnerabilities Risk Rating: Low Software: Multiple Web Browsers Platforms: Unix and Windows Author: Paul Johnston assisted by Richard Moore Date: 15 September 2004 Advisory ID#: wp-04-0001 URL: http://www.westpoint.ltd.uk/advisories/wp-04-0001.txt CVE: Multiple assigned, see main text Overview -------- A design goal for cookies is to "prevent the sharing of session information between hosts that are in different domains." It appears current implementations are successful at allowing a domain to keep its cookies private. However, multiple mechanisms have been discovered for one domain to inject cookies into another. These could be used to perform session fixation attacks against web applications. Recommendations: * Affected browsers be patched for these vulnerabilities. * Web applications implement application layer mitigations for session fixation attacks, as described in [2]. Tested: Internet Explorer 6.0 for Windows 2000, all patches Konqueror 3.1.4 for SuSE 9.0 Mozilla Firefox 0.9.2 for Windows 2000 Opera 7.51 for Windows 2000 Cross-Domain Cookie Injection ----------------------------- Vulnerable: Konqueror CAN-2004-0746 Internet Explorer CAN-2004-0866 Mozilla CAN-2004-0867 Not vulnerable: Opera By default, cookies are only sent to the host that issued them. There is an optional "domain" attribute that overrides this behaviour. For example, red.example.com could set a cookie with domain=.example.com. This would then be sent to any host in the .example.com domain. There is potential for abuse here, consider the case where red.example.com sets a cookie with domain=.com. In principle this would be sent to any host in the .com domain. However [1] requires browsers to reject cookies where: "The value for the Domain attribute contains no embedded dots" This prevents a cookie being set with domain=.com. However, this does not extend to country domains that are split into two parts. For example, red.example.co.uk could set a cookie with domain=.co.uk and this will be sent to all hosts in the .co.uk domain. Mozilla follows the RFC exactly and is vulnerable to this. Konqueror and Internet Explorer have some further protection, preventing domains of the following forms: * Where the 2nd level domain is two or fewer characters, i.e. xx.yy or x.yy * Domains of the form (com|net|mil|org|gov|edu|int).yy This does prevent .co.uk cross domain cookie injection but does not protect all domains. For example, the following .uk domains are unprotected: .ltd.uk .plc.uk .sch.uk .nhs.uk .police.uk .mod.uk When testing with Opera, it appeared that browser always correctly detected the domain. It is not immediately clear how Opera does this check. Example exploitation: 1) http://example.ltd.uk/ is identified for attack. It uses the "sid" cookie to hold the session ID. 2) Attacker obtains attacker.ltd.uk domain 3) User is enticed to click link to http://attacker.ltd.uk/ 4) This site sets the "sid" cookie with domain=.ltd.uk 5) When user logs into example.ltd.uk, they are using a sesion ID known to the attacker. 6) Attacker now has a logged-in session ID and has compromised the user's account. Exploitation is dependent on the user clicking an untrusted link. However, it is fundamental to the use of the web that we do sometimes click untrusted links. This attack can happen regardless of the use of SSL. Cross Security Boundary Cookie Injection ---------------------------------------- Vulnerable: Internet Explorer CAN-2004-0869 Konqueror CAN-2004-0870 Mozilla CAN-2004-0871 Opera CAN-2004-0872 By default cookies are sent to all ports on the host that issued them, regardless of whether SSL is in use. There is an optional "secure" attribute that restricts sending to secure channels. This prevents secure cookies leaking out over insecure channels. However, there is no protection to prevent cookies set over a non-secure channel being presented on a secure channel. In general to maintain proper boundaries between security levels, it is necessary to defend against both attacks - protecting both confidentiality and integrity. Example exploitation: 1) https://example.com/ identified for attack, which uses "sid" cookie as session ID. 2) User is enticed to click link to http://example.com/ 3) By some mechanism the attacker intercepts this request and sets the "sid" cookie 4) When user logs into https://example.com/ they are using a sesion ID known to the attacker. 5) Attacker now has a logged-in session ID and has compromised the user's account. In addition to the user clicking an untrusted link, exploitation is dependent on the attacker tampering with non-SSL network traffic. This is a reasonable assumption as the purpose of SSL is to provide security over an insecure network. References ---------- [1] RFC2965 - HTTP State Management Mechanism http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2965.txt [2] Session Fixation Vulnerability in Web-based Applications http://www.acros.si/papers/session_fixation.pdf [3] Persistent Client State - HTTP Cookies http://www.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html [4] Cookies and Cookie Handling in Opera 7 Explained http://o.bulport.com/index.php?item=55 History ------- 16 July 2004 Vulnerabilities discovered 20 July 2004 Vendors informed 20 July 2004 Mozilla bug opened http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=252342 The discussion shows that the cross domain problem is a long standing known bug. However, one contibutor claimed the exploit is being used in the wild. Several fixes were suggested and it appears this bug will be addressed soon. No discussion of the SSL vs non-SSL problem. 21 July 2004 Opera respond The response explains that they take the cross domain problem seriously, and that they have solved it by doing a DNS lookup on the specified domain. Some information is available in [4]. They also explained that they could not solve the cross security boundary problem without breaking standards and existing web apps. This problem has previously been reported as the "Cookie Monster bug" http://www.securiteam.com/exploits/Cookie_Monster_vulnerability.html 23 July 2004 Konqueror respond Explain that they intend to fix the cross domain problem by including a list of ccTLDs that, like .uk, require 3 dots. The domain are: name,ai,au,bd,bh,ck,eg,et,fk,il,in,kh,kr,mk,mt,na, np,nz,pg,pk,qa,sa,sb,sg,sv,ua,ug,uk,uy,vn,za,zw The brief discussion of the cross security boundary suggests they do not consider it possible to solve at this time. 23 Aug 2004 KDE Security Advisory released http://www.kde.org/info/security/advisory-20040823-1.txt KDE issue an advisory stating the cross-domain problem is fixed in KDE 3.3. Patches are also available for older 3.x versions. 13 Sept 2004 Vendors notified of impending release 14 Sept 2004 CVE candidates assigned for other issues 15 Sept 2004 Microsoft respond Best practice for web sites to resist session fixation attacks is to change the session ID after authentication. They are looking at ways to address this in the browser. As this may cause compatibility issues and the issue is low risk, they have not commited to a timeline. 15 Sept 2004 Advisory published Thanks ------ Many thanks to the vendors for their responses. Also, thanks to Steven Christey for assigning CVE numbers. -- Paul Johnston Internet Security Specialist Westpoint Limited Albion Wharf, 19 Albion Street, Manchester, M1 5LN England Tel: +44 (0)161 237 1028 Fax: +44 (0)161 237 1031 email: paul@westpoint.ltd.uk web: www.westpoint.ltd.uk