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If Apache Tomcat 8.5.0 to 8.5.52, 9.0.0-M1 to 9.0.67, 10.0.0-M1 to 10.0.26 or 10.1.0-M1 to 10.1.0 was configured to ignore invalid HTTP headers via setting rejectIllegalHeader to false (the default for 8.5.x only), Tomcat did not reject a request containing an invalid Content-Length header making a request smuggling attack possible if Tomcat was located behind a reverse proxy that also failed to reject the request with the invalid header.
If Apache Tomcat 8.5.0 to 8.5.82, 9.0.0-M1 to 9.0.67, 10.0.0-M1 to 10.0.26 or 10.1.0-M1 to 10.1.0 was configured to ignore invalid HTTP headers via setting rejectIllegalHeader to false (the default for 8.5.x only), Tomcat did not reject a request containing an invalid Content-Length header making a request smuggling attack possible if Tomcat was located behind a reverse proxy that also failed to reject the request with the invalid header.
CVSS 3.1 Base Score 7.5. CVSS Attack Vector: network. CVSS Attack Complexity: low. CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
In the following example, a malformed HTTP request is sent to a website that includes a proxy server and a web server with the intent of poisoning the cache to associate one webpage with another malicious webpage.
Connection: Keep-AliveWhen this request is sent to the proxy server, the proxy server parses the POST request in the first seven lines, and encounters the two "Content-Length" headers. The proxy server ignores the first header, so it assumes the request has a body of length 44 bytes. Therefore, it treats the data in the next three lines that contain exactly 44 bytes as the first request's body. The proxy then parses the last three lines which it treats as the client's second request.
The request is forwarded by the proxy server to the web server. Unlike the proxy, the web server uses the first "Content-Length" header and considers that the first POST request has no body, and the second request is the line with the first GET (note that the second GET is parsed by the web server as the value of the "Bla" header).
The requests the web server sees are "POST /foobar.html" and "GET /poison.html", so it sends back two responses with the contents of the "foobar.html" page and the "poison.html" page, respectively. The proxy matches these responses to the two requests it thinks were sent by the client "POST /foobar.html" and "GET /page_to_poison.html". If the response is cacheable, the proxy caches the contents of "poison.html" under the URL "page_to_poison.html", and the cache is poisoned! Any client requesting "page_to_poison.html" from the proxy would receive the "poison.html" page.
When a website includes both a proxy server and a web server some protection against this type of attack can be achieved by installing a web application firewall, or use a web server that includes a stricter HTTP parsing procedure or make all webpages non-cacheable.
Additionally, if a web application includes a Java servlet for processing requests, the servlet can check for multiple "Content-Length" headers and if they are found the servlet can return an error response thereby preventing the poison page to be cached, as shown below.
}
} catch (Exception ex) {...}// Set up response writer object
}// check for multiple content length headerscount++;
// output error response
// process requestIn the following example, a malformed HTTP request is sent to a website that includes a web server with a firewall with the intent of bypassing the web server firewall to smuggle malicious code into the system..
Connection: Keep-AliveWhen this request is sent to the web server, the first POST request has a content-length of 49,223 bytes, and the firewall treats the line with 49,152 copies of "z" and the lines with an additional lines with 71 bytes as its body (49,152+71=49,223). The firewall then continues to parse what it thinks is the second request starting with the line with the third POST request.
Note that there is no CRLF after the "Bla: " header so the POST in the line is parsed as the value of the "Bla:" header. Although the line contains the pattern identified with a worm ("cmd.exe"), it is not blocked, since it is considered part of a header value. Therefore, "cmd.exe" is smuggled through the firewall.
When the request is passed through the firewall the web server the first request is ignored because the web server does not find an expected "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" header, and starts parsing the second request.
This second request has a content-length of 30 bytes, which is exactly the length of the next two lines up to the space after the "Bla:" header. And unlike the firewall, the web server processes the final POST as a separate third request and the "cmd.exe" worm is smuggled through the firewall to the web server.
To avoid this attack a Web server firewall product must be used that is designed to prevent this type of attack.
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