PDF Attack Filter for Java EE

Overview

This is a filter to block XSS attacks on PDF files served by Java EE applications. The details of the attack are discussed elsewhere. This filter implements a simple algorithm suggested by Amit Klein.

Approach

This attack relies on having some javascript in an anchor after the url like this: http://www.site.com/file.pdf#blah=javascript:alert(document.cookie);

We're going to use a Java EE filter to intercept requests before they reach our application. We could have just stripped off the anchor part of the URL, but that's not how HTTP works. The anchor isn't actually sent to the application, so we have to get much trickier.

We're going to use a redirect to set the browser's URL to the same URL without the anchor, thus preventing the attack. But we have to be able to tell the difference between the first request, and the redirected request. So we're going to add a temporary token to the URL, which we'll verify when it arrives. We don't want an attacker forging one of these tokens, so we're going to encrypt the user's source IP address along with a timestamp.

Download

The source code (one file) and the compiled class file are in a single zip file.

DOWNLOAD

Setup

The first step is to add the filter to our application. All we have to do is put the PDFAttackFilter class on our application's classpath, probably by putting it in the classes folder in WEB-INF. The class file should be in a folder structure that matches the package (org -> owasp -> filters -> PDFAttackFilter). You can extract the class file from the zip file.

Then we just have to add the following to our web.xml. You should paste this in right above your servlet definitions. You'll want to change the mapping so that it only applies to URL's that serve a PDF file. You could use *.pdf, but you may have servlets that stream PDF files that down't end in .pdf.

	<filter>
	     <filter-name>PDFAttackFilter</filter-name>
	     <filter-class>org.owasp.filters.PDFAttackFilter</filter-class>
             <init-param>
                 <param-name>timeoutSeconds</param-name>
                 <param-value>1</param-value>
             </init-param>
             <init-param>
                 <param-name>encryptionPassword</param-name>
                 <param-value>password</param-value>
             </init-param>
             <init-param>
                 <param-name>PDFAttackTokenName</param-name>
                 <param-value>PDFAttackToken</param-value>
             </init-param>
	  </filter>
	       
	  <filter-mapping>
	     <filter-name>PDFAttackFilter</filter-name>
	     <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
	  </filter-mapping>

Source Code

This code has been only minimally tested. Please help us verify the approach and the implementation used here.

/**
 *  Copyright (c) 2007 Free Software Foundation developed under the custody of the Open Web
 *  Application Security Project (http://www.owasp.org) This software package is published by OWASP
 *  under the LGPL. You should read and accept the LICENSE before you use, modify and/or redistribute
 *  this software.
 *
 * @author     Jeff Williams <a href="http://www.aspectsecurity.com">Aspect Security</a>
 * @created    January 4, 2007
 */

package org.owasp.filters;

import java.io.IOException;

import javax.crypto.Cipher;
import javax.crypto.SecretKey;
import javax.crypto.SecretKeyFactory;
import javax.crypto.spec.PBEParameterSpec;
import javax.servlet.Filter;
import javax.servlet.FilterChain;
import javax.servlet.FilterConfig;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.ServletResponse;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

public class PDFAttackFilter implements Filter 
{

	private static sun.misc.BASE64Decoder decoder = new sun.misc.BASE64Decoder();
	private static sun.misc.BASE64Encoder encoder = new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder();
	private static byte[] salt = { (byte) 0x23, (byte) 0x3f, (byte) 0x28, (byte) 0x00, (byte) 0x11, (byte) 0xc2, (byte) 0xd1, (byte) 0xff };
	private static PBEParameterSpec ps = new PBEParameterSpec( salt, 20 );
	private static SecretKey secretKey;
	private static int timeoutSeconds = 10;
	private static String tokenName = "PDFAttackToken";
	
	
	public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException
	{
		HttpServletRequest req = (HttpServletRequest)request;
		HttpServletResponse res = (HttpServletResponse)response;
		String token = req.getParameter( tokenName );

		try
		{

			// IF the URL doesn't contain token, then:
			//  calculate X=encrypt_with_key(server_time, client_IP_address)
			//  redirect to file.pdf?token=X
			//  add #a to the end of the url to eliminate any remaining anchors
			
			if ( token == null )
			{
				String etoken = createToken( req );
				String base = req.getRequestURI();
				String querystring = req.getQueryString();
				if ( querystring != null ) base += "?" + req.getQueryString();
				String appender = base.contains( "?" ) ? "&" : "?";
				String url = base + appender + tokenName + "=" + etoken + "#a";
				res.sendRedirect( res.encodeRedirectURL( url ) );
				return;
			}
	
			// ELSE IF the URL contains token, then:	
			// if decrypt(token_query).IP_address==client_IP_address and
			// decrypt(token_query).time>server_time-10sec
			//  serve the PDF resource as an in-line resource
			
			if ( checkToken( token, req ) )
			{
				chain.doFilter(req, res);
				return;
			}
	
			// ELSE IF the token doesn't match, then:
			// serve the PDF resource as a "save to disk" resource via a proper
			// choice of the Content-Type header (and/or an attachment, via
			// Content-Disposition).

			res.addHeader("Content-Disposition", "Attachment" );				
			res.setContentType( "application/octet" );  // may be overwritten
			chain.doFilter(req, res);
		}
		catch( Exception e )
		{
			throw new ServletException( e );
		}
	}

	public void destroy() {
	}

	public void init(FilterConfig filterConfig) throws ServletException
	{
		try
		{
			String tsparam = filterConfig.getInitParameter("timeoutSeconds");
			timeoutSeconds = Integer.parseInt(tsparam);
			
			String epparam = filterConfig.getInitParameter("encryptionPassword");
			char[] password = epparam.toCharArray();
			
			String tokenName = filterConfig.getInitParameter("PDFAttackTokenName");
			
			SecretKeyFactory kf = SecretKeyFactory.getInstance( "PBEWithMD5AndDES" );
			secretKey = kf.generateSecret( new javax.crypto.spec.PBEKeySpec( password ) );
		}
		catch( Exception e )
		{
			throw new ServletException( e );
		}
	}

	public String createToken( HttpServletRequest request ) throws Exception
	{
		String address = request.getRemoteAddr();
		String time = ""+System.currentTimeMillis();
		return encryptString( address + "|" + time );
	}
	
	public boolean checkToken( String etoken, HttpServletRequest request ) throws Exception
	{
		String token = decryptString( etoken );
		
		String currentAddress = request.getRemoteAddr();
		String tokenAddress = getAddressFromToken( token );
		
		long currentTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
		long tokenTime = getTimeFromToken( token );
		
		return (currentAddress.equals( tokenAddress )) && (tokenTime > currentTime - timeoutSeconds * 1000);
	}

	public String getAddressFromToken( String token )
	{
		String address = token.substring( 0, token.indexOf("|") );
		return address;
	}
	
	public long getTimeFromToken( String token )
	{
		String date = token.substring( token.indexOf("|") + 1 );
		Long longdate = Long.parseLong( date );
		return longdate.longValue();
	}
	
	public synchronized String decryptString( String str ) throws Exception
	{
		Cipher passwordDecryptCipher = Cipher.getInstance( "PBEWithMD5AndDES/CBC/PKCS5Padding" );
		passwordDecryptCipher.init( Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, secretKey, ps );
		byte[] dec = decoder.decodeBuffer( str.replace( '_', '+') );
		byte[] utf8 = passwordDecryptCipher.doFinal( dec );
		return new String( utf8, "UTF-8" );
	}

	public synchronized String encryptString( String str ) throws Exception
	{
		Cipher passwordEncryptCipher = Cipher.getInstance( "PBEWithMD5AndDES/CBC/PKCS5Padding" );
		passwordEncryptCipher.init( Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, secretKey, ps );
		byte[] utf8 = str.getBytes( "UTF-8" );
		byte[] enc = passwordEncryptCipher.doFinal( utf8 );
		return encoder.encode( enc ).replace( '+', '_' );
	}

}

Compile

There are not many dependencies here, just the standard Java EE environment. You can compile with:

 javac -classpath j2ee.jar -d . *.java

Then just copy the 'org' folder that gets created to the WEB-INF/classes folder.