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Top 10 2010-A10-Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards
NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE LATEST VERSION. Please visit the OWASP Top 10 project page to find the latest edition.
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Threat Agents | Attack Vectors | Security Weakness | Technical Impacts | Business Impacts | |
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Application Specific | Exploitability EASY |
Prevalence UNCOMMON |
Detectability EASY |
Impact MODERATE |
Application / Business Specific |
Consider anyone who can trick your users into submitting a request to your website. Any website or other HTML feed that your users use could do this. | Attacker links to unvalidated redirect and tricks victims into clicking it. Victims are more likely to click on it, since the link is to a valid site. Attacker targets unsafe forward to bypass security checks. | Applications frequently redirect users to other pages, or use internal forwards in a similar manner. Sometimes the target page is specified in an unvalidated parameter, allowing attackers to choose the destination page. | Such redirects may attempt to install malware or trick victims into disclosing passwords or other sensitive information. Unsafe forwards may allow access control bypass. | Consider the business value of retaining your users’ trust. What if they get owned by malware? What if attackers can access internal only functions? |
Am I Vulnerable To 'Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards'?
The best way to find out if an application has any unvalidated redirects or forwards is to:
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How Do I Prevent 'Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards'?
Safe use of redirects and forwards can be done in a number of ways:
It is recommended that any such destination parameters be a mapping value, rather than the actual URL or portion of the URL, and that server side code translate this mapping to the target URL. Applications can use ESAPI to override the sendRedirect() method to make sure all redirect destinations are safe. Avoiding such flaws is extremely important as they are a favorite target of phishers trying to gain the user’s trust. |
Example Attack Scenarios
Scenario #1: The application has a page called “redirect.jsp” which takes a single parameter named “url”. The attacker crafts a malicious URL that redirects users to a malicious site that performs phishing and installs malware. http://www.example.com/redirect.jsp?url=evil.com
Scenario #2:The application uses forward to route requests between different parts of the site. To facilitate this, some pages use a parameter to indicate where the user should be sent if a transaction is successful. In this case, the attacker crafts a URL that will pass the application’s access control check and then forward the attacker to an administrative function that she would not normally be able to access. http://www.example.com/boring.jsp?fwd=admin.jsp
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References
OWASP External |
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