guestbook script is still vulnerable under apache

From: Stunt Pope (markjrat_private)
Date: Thu Jun 25 1998 - 12:07:41 PDT

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    Due to what looks to me to be a bug in certain webservers handling of
    malformed SSI tags, I believe I've found a potential vulnerability in the
    guestbook script at Matt Wright's archive.
    
    Basically, it is still possible to use the SSI method of attack provided
    certain conditions are met:
    
            1) $allow_html is turned on (which it is by default)
            2) whatever file holds the messages (guestbook.html) is
               server parsed
            3) the web server executes a malformed SSI
    
    The script attempts to strip out SSI's with the following regex:
    
    $value =~ s/<!--(.|\n)*-->//g;
    
    Which is fairly easily circumvented by entering:
    
    <!--#exec cmd="/bin/cat /etc/passwd"->
    
    It seems to me that if the resultant page is server parsed, the server
    (I'm testing this on Apache 1.2.6) will happily execute the SSI. In fact
    it will do it in the absence of a closing tag altogether it seems.
    
    <!--#exec cmd="/bin/cat /etc/passwd"
    
    ...also seems to work. So it seems to me that the vulnerability exists
    because:
    
            1) It's assumed an attacker will enter a correctly formed SSI
            2) the httpd executes malformed SSI's
    
    -mark
    
    
    ---
    Mark Jeftovic                   aka: mark jeff or vic, stunt pope.
    markjrat_private              http://www.shmOOze.net/~markjr
    Private World's BOFH            http://www.PrivateWorld.com
    irc: L-bOMb                     Keep `em Guessing
    



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