OWASP SiteGenerator

Owasp SiteGenerator v0.70 (public beta release)

[as posted to several mailing lists]

After much development and hard work here is the first stable (beta) release of the new Owasp SiteGenerator tool (whose Open Source development has been sponsored by Foundstone)

Owasp SiteGenerator allows the creating of dynamic websites based on XML files and predefined vulnerabilities (some simple to detect/exploit, some harder) covering multiple .Net languages and web development architectures (for example, navigation: Html, Javascript, Flash, Java, etc...).

SiteGenerator can be used on the following projects:

   - Evaluation of Web Application Security Scanners
   - Evaluation of Web Application Firewalls
   - Developer Training
   - Web Honeypots
   - Web Application hacking contests (or evaluations)

You can download the latest version from here:

   * Website installer: SiteGenerator_IIS_Website_Setup v0.70.msi
   * Gui Installer: Owasp SiteGenerator v0.70.msi

Some installation and configuration notes (which you only need to do once):

   * Before you install the website do this (assuming a windows 2003 image)
         o Create a new Application pool, call it
           SiteGeneratorSystemAppPool), and configure it to run under
           System
         o Create a new website and point it to a local directory (the
           website installation files will be copied here)
         o Configure the new website to run Asp.Net 2.0
         o Create a new Application in that website and set the
           application pool to SiteGeneratorSystemAppPool
         o Add a IIS wildcard Application Mapping (accessible via Home
           Directory -> Configuration) to 
           C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll
           and untick the 'Verify that file exists'
         o Make sure Default.htm is one of the files included in the
           default document list (in the 'Documents' tab)
         o Configure the Website's IP Address to be 127.0.0.1, and
           click on the Advanced button to add a new host header mapping
               + IPAddress: 127.0.0.1
               + TCP Port: 80
               + Host Header Value: SiteGenerator
   * Install the WebSite (selecting as the target the website created
     in the previous step)
   * Install the GUI
   * Add this line to your hosts file (located in
     C:\window\system32\drivers\etc\hosts)
         o SiteGenerator        127.0.0.1
   * Click on the SiteGenerator link that was placed on your desktop

If all goes well you now can browse to http://SiteGenerator or http://127.0.0.1 (depending if you did the mappings or not) and see the default SiteGenerator's website. If you see a blank page, try http://127.0.0.1/Default.htm (you might be getting a cached version of http://127.0.0.1)

Note that the SQL Injection vulnerabilities expect that you have the latest version of HacmeBank (v2.0) installed in your box.

I am in the process of creating several videos (covering the installation and GUI) which I am sure will be very useful and practical. Also if you are interested in helping in the development of SiteGenerator or in its vulnerabilities database, then contact me directly.

Introduction to SiteGenerator

1) this tool has been sponsored by Foundstone, BUT (and it is a big but) it is being released under the Owasp .Net Project and an Open Source Licence. So Kudos for Foundstone for doing this and I hope they get good exposure from it

2) The main objective of the tool is to create dynamic websites based on XML files which will 'map' to a database containing hundreds of different vulnerabilities (some simple to detect/exploit, some harder) covering multiple languages and web development architectures (for example navigation: Html, JavaScript, Flash, Java, etc...)

3) There are many ways this tool can be used, here are just a couple starting ideas:

a) As a training tool since it allows the creation of multiple websites with multiple variations of vulnerabilities
b) As a Web Application Honeypot (since we are able to create dynamic ( i.e. false) websites and track / monitor in real-time all requests made)
c) As a test ground for newly discovered vulnerabilities types and its exploit vectors
d) As a benchmark for Web Security Scanners

4) The Web Security Scanner benchmarking and testing is the most obvious short-term application for this tool, but I think that as it evolves the others will be proven to be as (if not more) valuable

5) On the Web Security Scanner issue:

a) My main hope is that the Web Security Scanner Companies will see this
tool as an opportunity and work with the Owasp .Net project (and other
groups that want to be involved) in a productive and constructive way.

b) Although in the short term some Web Security Scanners might have some bad results (well, at least when compared with what their Marketing machine publishes :) in the medium term, as they adapt and improve their scanning techniques, everybody will benefit

c) One of the core objectives of the tool (when thinking about benchmarking Web Security Scanners) is to be able to create real and measurable metrics. For example:
   * Scanner X was able to detect 65% of the vulnerabilities where Scanner Y was able to detect 90%
   * Scanner X made 10000 to detect those 65% (over a period of 16h) where scanner Y made 4000 request (over a period of 10h)
   ** 20% of Scanner X results where false positives, where Scanner Y
had 50% false positives
   ** Scanner X was able to deal with Html and JavaScript navigation, Scanner Y was able to deal with Html, JavaScript and Flash, and both where NOT able to deal with Java based navigation systems
   ** Scanner X is not able to go more than 40 levels deep, Scanner Y is
able to go up at least 100 levels deep (if note more)
   ** etc, etc, etc.

d) There will be two main types of tests that can be done in the short term:
    * provive the links to all different types of vulnerabilities existent in the database, and see how many can the scanner correctly identify? and
    * when multiple types of website architectures and navigation techniques are used, how many vulnerabilities is the scanner able to detect?

e) In order to test (and further improve the tool) I want to take this opportunity to ask the Web Application Security Scanners that subscribe to this list (which I believe all do) to give the Owasp .Net project a temporary licence to they product so that we can use it during  development and during some basic benchmarking that we might do (and NO, I will not sign an NDA that doesn't allow me to publish the data collected, in fact I will not sign ANY NDA with ANY web application security scanner company)

f) note that at the moment I (Dinis) have no plans to do a full benchmarking exercise since I don't have the time required, but I know of at least one group of experienced security consultants which is starting such project (and I will be supporting them). If anybody else is interested in doing a similar benchmarking project please contact me directly

6) Regarding how the tool works, here is a brief technical description:

There are two main components: A webserver (which can be IIS or a custom webserver) and a GUI application (written in C# 2.0). The Gui Application is responsible for handling all mappings (from the virtual requests to the actual pages on disk) and there is an unmanaged C++ DLL loaded by both which implements a Shared Memory to send and receive data between them.

The current version is hardcoded to IIS, although in the code there is support for using a custom .Net webserver. This IIS version uses an HttpHander to capture all requests and communicate with the GUI Application (called SiteGeneratorGUI). The previous version used C++ Detours to hook all sorts of functions in either IIS or the Custom Webserver (this worked ok, but ultimately I decided to use IIS since it was much more robust and scalable

The dynamic websites are defined by XML files like this (which are edited on the GUI Application using the WYSIWYG Altova Authentic Browser Object (SPS files created via Altova's StyleVision application)):

     <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
    <SiteGenerator name="SiteGenerator Demo" xmlns:ipo="
http://www.altova.com/IPO" xmlns="http://www.xmlspy.com/schemas/orgchart"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
         <site>
             <folder name="">
                <file mappedTo="aspx/Default.aspx" name="HelloWorld.aspx" />

                <folder name="htm" />
                <folder name="aspx">
                    <file mappedTo="aspx/pages.htm" name="pages.htm" />
                    <file mappedTo="aspx/xss.aspx" name="xss.aspx" />
                    <file mappedTo="aspx/SqlInjection_Easy.aspx" name="
SqlInjection.aspx" />
                    <file mappedTo="aspx/SqlInjection_Hard.aspx" name="
SqlInjection2.aspx" />
                </folder>
                <folder name="flash">
                     <file mappedTo="flash/cromas_xml.swf"
name="cromas_xml.swf" />
                     <file mappedTo="flash/cromas_xml.htm" name="menu.htm"
/>
                     <file mappedTo="/flash/cromas_menu.xml"
name="cromas_menu.xml" />
                </folder>
             </folder>
        </site>
    </SiteGenerator>

SiteGeneratorGUI.exe and IIS will map the virtual name "HelloWorld.aspx" to the file on disk "aspx/Default.aspx" . For example:

http://localhost/HelloWorld.aspx --> F:\Owasp  SiteGenerator\SiteGenerator_ContentPages\aspx\Default.aspx

So to create new websites all you need to do is to create a new XML file

Tnd to create new vulnerabilities type, all you need to create in an Aspx page and map it to the xml file

7) the tool is still in Beta, so please be patient with it. The code is still a bit in mess, since there are multiple past experiments in there which I will need to clean up