CVE-2017-18262 - URL Redirection to Untrusted Site ('Open Redirect')

Severity

57%

Complexity

86%

Confidentiality

81%

Blackboard Learn (Since at least 17th of October 2017) has allowed Unvalidated Redirects on any signed-in user through its endpoints for handling Shibboleth logins, as demonstrated by a webapps/bb-auth-provider-shibboleth-BBLEARN/execute/shibbolethLogin?returnUrl= URI.

Blackboard Learn (Since at least 17th of October 2017) has allowed Unvalidated Redirects on any signed-in user through its endpoints for handling Shibboleth logins, as demonstrated by a webapps/bb-auth-provider-shibboleth-BBLEARN/execute/shibbolethLogin?returnUrl= URI.

CVSS 3.0 Base Score 6.1. CVSS Attack Vector: network. CVSS Attack Complexity: low. CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N).

CVSS 2.0 Base Score 5.8. CVSS Attack Vector: network. CVSS Attack Complexity: medium. CVSS Vector: (AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:N).

Demo Examples

URL Redirection to Untrusted Site ('Open Redirect')

CWE-601

The following code obtains a URL from the query string and then redirects the user to that URL.


               
header("Location: " . $redirect_url);

The problem with the above code is that an attacker could use this page as part of a phishing scam by redirecting users to a malicious site. For example, assume the above code is in the file example.php. An attacker could supply a user with the following link:


               
http://example.com/example.php?url=http://malicious.example.com

The user sees the link pointing to the original trusted site (example.com) and does not realize the redirection that could take place.

URL Redirection to Untrusted Site ('Open Redirect')

CWE-601

The following code is a Java servlet that will receive a GET request with a url parameter in the request to redirect the browser to the address specified in the url parameter. The servlet will retrieve the url parameter value from the request and send a response to redirect the browser to the url address.


               
}
}
}
response.sendRedirect(url);

The problem with this Java servlet code is that an attacker could use the RedirectServlet as part of a e-mail phishing scam to redirect users to a malicious site. An attacker could send an HTML formatted e-mail directing the user to log into their account by including in the e-mail the following link:


               
<a href="http://bank.example.com/redirect?url=http://attacker.example.net">Click here to log in</a>

The user may assume that the link is safe since the URL starts with their trusted bank, bank.example.com. However, the user will then be redirected to the attacker's web site (attacker.example.net) which the attacker may have made to appear very similar to bank.example.com. The user may then unwittingly enter credentials into the attacker's web page and compromise their bank account. A Java servlet should never redirect a user to a URL without verifying that the redirect address is a trusted site.

Demo Examples

Improper Input Validation

CWE-20

This example demonstrates a shopping interaction in which the user is free to specify the quantity of items to be purchased and a total is calculated.


               
...

The user has no control over the price variable, however the code does not prevent a negative value from being specified for quantity. If an attacker were to provide a negative value, then the user would have their account credited instead of debited.

Improper Input Validation

CWE-20

This example asks the user for a height and width of an m X n game board with a maximum dimension of 100 squares.


               
.../* board dimensions */
die("No integer passed: Die evil hacker!\n");
die("No integer passed: Die evil hacker!\n");
die("Value too large: Die evil hacker!\n");

While this code checks to make sure the user cannot specify large, positive integers and consume too much memory, it does not check for negative values supplied by the user. As a result, an attacker can perform a resource consumption (CWE-400) attack against this program by specifying two, large negative values that will not overflow, resulting in a very large memory allocation (CWE-789) and possibly a system crash. Alternatively, an attacker can provide very large negative values which will cause an integer overflow (CWE-190) and unexpected behavior will follow depending on how the values are treated in the remainder of the program.

Improper Input Validation

CWE-20

The following example shows a PHP application in which the programmer attempts to display a user's birthday and homepage.


               
echo "Birthday: $birthday<br>Homepage: <a href=$homepage>click here</a>"

The programmer intended for $birthday to be in a date format and $homepage to be a valid URL. However, since the values are derived from an HTTP request, if an attacker can trick a victim into clicking a crafted URL with <script> tags providing the values for birthday and / or homepage, then the script will run on the client's browser when the web server echoes the content. Notice that even if the programmer were to defend the $birthday variable by restricting input to integers and dashes, it would still be possible for an attacker to provide a string of the form:


               
2009-01-09--

If this data were used in a SQL statement, it would treat the remainder of the statement as a comment. The comment could disable other security-related logic in the statement. In this case, encoding combined with input validation would be a more useful protection mechanism.

Furthermore, an XSS (CWE-79) attack or SQL injection (CWE-89) are just a few of the potential consequences when input validation is not used. Depending on the context of the code, CRLF Injection (CWE-93), Argument Injection (CWE-88), or Command Injection (CWE-77) may also be possible.

Improper Input Validation

CWE-20

This function attempts to extract a pair of numbers from a user-supplied string.


               
}
die("Did not specify integer value. Die evil hacker!\n");
/* proceed assuming n and m are initialized correctly */

This code attempts to extract two integer values out of a formatted, user-supplied input. However, if an attacker were to provide an input of the form:


               
123:

then only the m variable will be initialized. Subsequent use of n may result in the use of an uninitialized variable (CWE-457).

Improper Input Validation

CWE-20

The following example takes a user-supplied value to allocate an array of objects and then operates on the array.


               
}
list[0] = new Widget();
die("Negative value supplied for list size, die evil hacker!");

This example attempts to build a list from a user-specified value, and even checks to ensure a non-negative value is supplied. If, however, a 0 value is provided, the code will build an array of size 0 and then try to store a new Widget in the first location, causing an exception to be thrown.

Improper Input Validation

CWE-20

This application has registered to handle a URL when sent an intent:


               
}......
}
}
int length = URL.length();
...

The application assumes the URL will always be included in the intent. When the URL is not present, the call to getStringExtra() will return null, thus causing a null pointer exception when length() is called.

Overview

Type

Blackboard Learn 9.1

First reported 6 years ago

2018-04-30 13:29:00

Last updated 6 years ago

2018-06-12 18:15:00

Affected Software

Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q2 2016

9.1

Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q2 2017

9.1

Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q4 2015

9.1

Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q4 2016

9.1

Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q4 2017

9.1

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