Testing for Incubated Vulnerability (OTG-INPVAL-015)

OWASP Testing Guide v2 Table of Contents

Short Description of the Issue (Topic and Explanation)

Exploitation of some vulnerabilities, or even functional features of a web application will allow an attacker to plant a piece of data that will later be retrieved by an unsuspected user or other component of the system, exploiting some vulnerability there.

In a penetration test, incubated attacks can be used to assess the criticality of certain bugs, using the particular security issue found to build a client-side based attack that usually will be used to target a large number of victims at the same time (i.e. all users browsing the site).

This type of asynchronous attack covers a great spectrum of attack vectors, among them the following:

• File upload components in a web application, allowing the attacker to upload corrupted media files (jpg images exploiting CVE-2004-0200, png images exploiting CVE-2004-0597, executable files, site pages with active component, etc)

• Cross-site scripting issues in public forums posts (see XSS description for additional details). An attacker could potentially store malicious scripts or code in a repository in the backend of the web-application (e.g., a database) so that this script/code gets executed by one of the users (end users, administrators, etc). The archetypical incubated attack is exemplified by using a cross-site scripting vulnerability in a user forum, bulletin board or blog in order to inject some javascript code at the vulnerable page, and will be eventually rendered and executed at the site user's browser --using the trust level of the original (vulnerable) site at the user's browser.

• SQL/XPATH Injection allowing the attacker to upload content to a database, which will be later retrieved as part of the active content in a web page. For example, if the attacker can post arbitrary Javascript in a bulletin board so that it gets executed by users, then he might take control of their browsers (e.g., [[1]]).

• Misconfigured servers allowing installation of java packages or similar web site components (i.e. Tomcat, or web hosting consoles such as Plesk, CPanel, Helm, etc.)

Black Box testing and example

Testing for Topic X vulnerabilities:
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Result Expected:
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Gray Box testing and example

Testing for Topic X vulnerabilities:
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Result Expected:
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References

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Tools
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OWASP Testing Guide v2

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