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Is encoding really encoding if it is escaping?

The title might be confusing, let’s see if we can clear it up.

I saw an article the other day that was giving a comparison between encoding, encryption and hashing. There was a statement made that basically said:

Encoding has no security purpose.

I thought this was interesting because when training on security topics we mention encoding for specific use cases. For example, when we discuss Cross-Site Scripting, the answer is output encoding.

I want to clarify that I agree with the statement in the article in that encoding does not provide any type of protections regarding confidentiality or anything like that. There is no data protection there. It does start me thinkng about encoding vs. escaping.

In the example above, regarding XSS, we really are talking about escaping, right? For SQL Injection we would say to escape the data, not encode it. For XSS we are trying to achieve the same goal: Ensure that control characters are not interpreted, but read as data.

The difference is that for SQL we would escape something like a single quote (‘) with two single quotes (”). This tells the Interpreter to treat the single quote as data (like O’Reilly) instead of treating it like a delimiter around data.

However, in the browser we typically encode characters rather than escape them. Instead of returning a (<) character, I would return (&lt;). This tells the browser to display a (<) character on the page rather than treat it as the beginning of an HTML tag.

This leads to some confusion when you are following the rules of the interpreter that uses encoding to escape.

When I teach classes I always use the different terminology when I cover these vulnerabilities. SQL Injection uses escaping. XSS is focused on encoding. In the end, the goal is escaping even though one uses encoding.

This becomes confusing when you want to discuss encoding at a pure level as it tends to have a different meaning depending on the context that you use it.

While encoding and escaping are technically different things, their terms are used almost as one when it comes to things like cross-site scripting. In that context, the encoding actually does provide a security purpose even though it is based on the interpreter the data is being sent to.

Security can be confusing at times. If you have questions or thoughts about application security, I would love to have a conversation around them. Feel free to reach out to me. Let me know what struggles you have when it comes to appsec.

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Ep. 116: Chrome Retires XSS Auditor

Do you rely on the browser to protect your application from Cross-Site Scripting? Over the years, many of the popular browsers attempted to create these XSS filters to help reduce the risk of the vulnerability. Unfortunately, over the years we have seen a lot of bypasses to these filters. Chrome announced they are removing their XSS Auditor. Hear some of our thoughts on the changes.

Listen to the Episode:

 

References

https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/xss-auditor

[Read more…] about Ep. 116: Chrome Retires XSS Auditor

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Interesting Browser Difference

Update 8/16/19 – It appears that not long after I published this, Chrome sent an update that now mimics FireFox. In Chrome you now get a new tab that has a URL of “about:blank#blocked”.

When working on a recent test I noticed something pretty interesting when I had found what I thought was a Cross-Site Scripting vulnerability. I have posted previously on the ability to execute XSS when you control the HREF attribute of a link tag. This is done by setting a url to javascript:alert(9);. This might look like:

<a href=”javascript:alert(9);”>Click Me</a>

This is similar to the situation I had. However, when I was testing with FireFox, I found that the alert box was not appearing. Instead, when I clicked the link, it would open a new tab and the URL would be javascript:alert(9);. No Alert box. What gives??

So I could see the payload there, but it wouldn’t execute. I was confused. I decided to load up Chrome and see what happens there. To my surprise, although it is what I originally expected, the alert box was displayed.

It turns out, the link tag wasn’t as simple as the above example. Instead it looked more like this:

<a href=”javascript:alert(9);” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener no referrer”>Click Me</a>

After performing a little more testing, it appears that when the target and red attributes exist, Firefox opens a new tab instead of executing the specified JavaScript. I m not sure if this is a bug in how FireFox handles this scenario or not, but it does highlight an interesting point about differences with browsers.

In the event your testing runs across this same type of scenario, take the time to try different browsers to see if the results change.

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XSS in a Script Tag

Cross-site scripting is a pretty common vulnerability, even with many of the new advances in UI frameworks. One of the first things we mention when discussing the vulnerability is to understand the context. Is it HTML, Attribute, JavaScript, etc.? This understanding helps us better understand the types of characters that can be used to expose the vulnerability.

In this post, I want to take a quick look at placing data within a <script> tag. In particular, I want to look at how embedded <script> tags are processed. Let’s use a simple web page as our example.

<html>
	<head>
	</head>
	<body>
	<script>
		var x = "<a href=test.html>test</a>";
	</script>
	</body>
</html>

The above example works as we expect. When you load the page, nothing is displayed. The link tag embedded in the variable is rated as a string, not parsed as a link tag. What happens, though, when we embed a <script> tag? 

<html>
	<head>
	</head>
	<body>
	<script>
		var x = "<script>alert(9)</script>";
	</script>
	</body>
</html>

In the above snippet, actually nothing happens on the screen. Meaning that the alert box does not actually trigger. This often misleads people into thinking the code is not vulnerable to cross-site scripting. if the link tag is not processes, why would the script tag be. In many situations, the understanding is that we need to break out of the (“) delimiter to start writing our own JavaScript commands. For example, if I submitted a payload of (test”;alert(9);t = “). This type of payload would break out of the x variable and add new JavaScript commands. Of course, this doesn’t work if the (“) character is properly encoded to not allow breaking out.

Going back to our previous example, we may have overlooked something very simple. It wasn’t that the script wasn’t executing because it wasn’t being parsed. Instead, it wasn’t executing because our JavaScript was bad. Our issue was that we were attempting to open a <script> within a <script>. What if we modify our value to the following:

<html>
	<head>
	</head>
	<body>
	<script>
		var x = "</script><script>alert(9)</script>";
	</script>
	</body>
</html>

In the above code, we are first closing out the original <script> tag and then we are starting a new one. This removes the embedded nuance and when the page is loaded, the alert box will appear.

This technique works in many places where a user can control the text returned within the <script> element. Of course, the important remediation step is to make sure that data is properly encoded when returned to the browser. By default, Content Security Policy may not be an immediate solution since this situation would indicate that inline scripts are allowed. However, if you are limiting the use of inline scripts to ones with a registered nonce would help prevent this technique. This reference shows setting the nonce (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Content-Security-Policy/script-src).

When testing our applications, it is important to focus on the lack of output encoding and less on the ability to fully exploit a situation. Our secure coding standards should identify the types of encoding that should be applied to outputs. If the encodings are not properly implemented then we are citing a violation of our standards.

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Properly Placing XSS Output Encoding

Cross-Site Scripting flaws, as well as other injection flaws, are pretty well understood. We know how they work and how to mitigate them. One of the key factors in mitigation of these flaws is output encoding or escaping. For SQL, we escape by using parameters. For cross-site scripting we use context sensitive output encoding.

In this post, I don’t want to focus on the how of output encoding for cross-site scripting. Rather, I want to focus on when in the pipeline it should be done. Over the years I have had a lot of people ask if it is ok to encode the data before storing it in the database. I recently came across this insufficient solution and thought it was a good time to address it again. I will look at a few different cases that indicate why the solution is insufficient and explain a more sufficient approach.

The Database Is Not Trusted

The database should not be considered a trusted resource. This is a common oversight in many organizations, most likely due to the fact that the database is internal. It lives in a protected portion of your production environment. While that is true, it has many sources that have access to it. Even if it is just your application that uses the database today, there are still administrators and update scripts that most likely access it. We can’t rule out the idea of a rogue administrator, even if it is very slim.

We also may not know if other applications access our database. What if there is a mobile application that has access? We can’t guarantee that every source of data is going to properly encode the data before it gets sent to the database. This leaves us with a gap in coverage and a potential for cross-site scripting.

Input Validation My Not Be Enough

I always recommend to developers to have good input validation. Of course, the term good is different for everyone. At the basic level, your input validation may limit a few characters. At the advanced level it may try to limit different types of attacks. In some cases, it is difficult to use input validation to eliminate all cross-site scripting payloads. Why? Due to the different contexts and the types of data that some forms accept, a payload may still squeak by. Are you protecting against all payloads across all the different contexts? How do you know what context the data will be used in?

In addition to potentially missing a payload, what about when another developer creates a function and forgets to include the input validation? Even more likely, what happens when a new application starts accessing your database and doesn’t perform the same input validation. it puts us back into the same scenario described in the section above regarding the database isn’t trusted.

You Don’t Know the Context

When receiving and storing data, the chances are good I don’t know where the data will be used. What is the context of the data when output? Is it going into a span tag, an attribute or even straight into JavaScript? Will it be used by a reporting engine? The context matters because it determines how we encode the data. Different contexts are concerned with different characters. Can I just throw data into the database with an html encoding context? At this point, I am transforming the data at a time where there is no transformation required. Cross-site scripting doesn’t execute in my SQL column.

A Better Approach

As you can see, the above techniques are useful, however, they appear insufficient for multiple reasons. I recommend performing the output encoding immediately before the data is actually used. By that, I mean to encode right before it is output to the client. This way it is very clear what the context is and the appropriate encoding can be implemented.
Don’t forget to perform input validation on your data, but remember it is typically not meant to stop all attack scenarios. Instead it is there to help reduce them. We must be aware that other applications may access our data and those applications may no follow the same procedures we do. Due to this, making sure we make encoding decisions at the last moment provides the best coverage. Of course, this relies on the developers remembering to perform the output encoding.

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Amazon XSS: Thoughts and Takeaways

It was recently identified, and Amazon was quick (2 days) to fix it, that one of their sites was vulnerable to cross-site scripting. Cross-site scripting is a vulnerability that allows an attacker to control the output in the user’s browser. A more detailed look into cross-site scripting can be found on the OWASP site.

Take-Aways

  • QA could have found this
  • Understand your input validation routines
  • Check to make sure the proper output encoding is in place in every location user supplied data is sent to the browser

Vulnerabilities like the one listed above are simple to detect. In fact, many can be detected by automated scanners. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on automated scanners to find every vulnerability. Automated scanning is a great first step in identifying flaws like cross-site scripting. It is just as important for developers and QA analysts to be looking for these types of bugs. When we break it down, a cross-site scripting flaw is just a bug. It may be classified under “security” but nonetheless it is a bug that effects the quality of the application.

We want to encourage developers and QA to start looking for these types of bugs to increase the quality of their applications. Quality is more than just if the app works as expected. If the application has a bug that allows an attacker the ability to send malicious code to another user of the application that is still a quality issue.

If you are a developer, take a moment to think about what output you send to the client and if you are properly encoding that data. It is not as simple as just encoding the less than character or greater than character. Context matters. Look for the delimiters and control characters that are relative to where the output is going to determine the best course of action. It is also a good idea to standardize the delimiters you use for things like HTML attributes. Don’t use double quotes in some places, single quotes in others and then nothing in the rest. Pick one (double or single quotes) and stick to it everywhere.

If you are a QA analyst, understand what input is accepted by the application and then where that output is then used again. The first step is testing what data you can send to the server. Has there been any input validation put in place? Input validation should be implemented in a way to limit the types and size of data in most of the fields. The next step is to verify that any special characters are being encoded when they are returned back down to the browser. These are simple steps that can be performed by anyone. You could also start scripting these tests to make it easier in the future.

It is our (dev,qa,ba,application owners) responsibility to create quality applications. Adding these types of checks do not add a lot of time to the cycle and the more you do it, the less you will start to see allowing you to increase the testing timelines. Bugs are everywhere so be careful and test often.