OWASP ModSecurity Securing WebGoat Section4 Sublesson 07.2

7. Concurrency -> 7.2 Shopping Cart Concurrency Flaw

Lesson overview

The WebGoat lesson overview is included with the WebGoat lesson solution.

Lesson solution

Refer to the zip file with the WebGoat lesson solutions. See Appendix A for more information.

Strategy

This WebGoat lesson demonstrates a shopping cart concurrency flaw: there is a window between when the purchase is started and the confirmation, which allows the shopping cart to be updated and get more expensive items for the same price. The user chooses an item, clicks on 'Purchase', opens another window, chooses more expensive items, clicks 'Update Cart', goes back to the original window and clicks 'Confirm', and the user has bought more items but based on the original price.

To solve this lesson, place a lock on the transaction once the purchase is initiated until it is confirmed or canceled. When a buyer has clicked on Purchase, no other transactions (Purchase or Update Cart) are allowed until Confirm or Cancel is pressed.

Implementation

The relevant data gathered from the web proxy is:

menu=800
QTY1=0&QTY2=0&QTY3=0&QTY4=0&SUBMIT=Purchase
QTY1=0&QTY2=0&QTY3=1&QTY4=0&SUBMIT=Update+Cart
CC=5321+1337+8888+2007&PAC=111&SUBMIT=Confirm
CC=5321+1337+8888+2007&PAC=111&SUBMIT=Cancel

The data file, lesson07-2.data, looks like this with initial values:

Entry{
  state = "none", 
  pending = "no", 
  time = 0
}

'State' changes when a button is pushed. The original intention was to implement a timeout also, but time did not permit this and, besides, a timeout should already be implemented in the application.

The following is what should happen during different states:

• When the Purchase button is pushed and pending is "no", set the datafile parameters as such: state = "purchase"; pending = "yes"; time = 0.
• If the Update Cart button is pushed while pending, return a non-nil error message.
• If Cancel or Confirm is pushed, set pending to "no".
• If there is a page request with no POST parameters, reset pending to "no".

Only the HTTP request is being used and the relevant parts of the Lua script, shopping-cart_07-2.lua, is as follows:

datafile = "/etc/modsecurity/data/lesson07-2.data"	
retval = nil

function main()
  local submit_type = m.getvar("ARGS_POST.SUBMIT", "none")
		
  function Entry (b) 
    local state = b.state
    local pending = b.pending
    local time = b.time  

    if b.state == "none" then
      if submit_type == "Purchase" then
        state = "Purchase"
        pending = "yes"
        time = 0
      end
    elseif submit_type == "Purchase" then
      state = "Purchase"
      pending = "yes"
      time = 0
    elseif submit_type == "Update Cart" then
      state = "Update Cart"
      time = 0
      if b.pending == "yes" then  -- error; block this action
        str1 = string.format("Error: attempt to update cart when purchase is pending;\n")	
        retval = str1
      end
    elseif submit_type == "Cancel" or submit_type == "Confirm" then	
      state = submit_type
      pending = "no"
      time = 0
    end	
		
    -- build the data file - this should all be on one line
    outstr = string.format("Entry{\n  state = \"%s\",\n  pending = \"%s\",
      \n  time = %d\n}\n\n", state, pending, time) 
  end
	
  dofile(datafile)
	
   -- write back to file
  local fh2 = io.open(datafile, "w+")
  fh2:write(outstr)
  fh2:flush()
  fh2:close()

  return retval
end

Here is the ModSecurity rule file, rulefile_07-2_shopping-cart-concurrency.conf:

  SecRule ARGS:menu "!@eq 800" "phase:2,t:none,skip:2"
  SecRule &ARGS_POST:SUBMIT "@eq 0" "nolog,skip:1"

  # action is triggered if script returns non-nil value
  SecRuleScript "/etc/modsecurity/data/shopping-cart_07-2.lua" \ 
"phase:2,t:none,log,auditlog,deny,severity:3,msg:'Luascript: Concurrency -> \ 
Shopping Cart: purchase is pending',tag:'CONCURRENCY', \
redirect:/_error_pages_/lesson07-2.html"
  SecAction "phase:2,allow:request,t:none,log,auditlog,msg:'Luascript: \ 
Concurrency -> Shopping Cart: purchase is NOT pending'"

When a transaction is pending, the user will get this message:

Comments

• This lesson solution shows how Lua can be used to handle application state; in this case, a purchase that utilizes a shopping cart.