Lotus Domino application vulnerability

From: Weld Pond (weldat_private)
Date: Thu Oct 08 1998 - 20:32:38 PDT

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    L0pht Security Advisory
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    URL Origin:    http://www.l0pht.com/advisories.html
    Release Date:  October  9th, 1998
    Application:   Lotus Domino
    Severity:      Web users can retrieve sensitive data in many Domino
                   based Internet applications
    Author:        nardoat_private
    Operating Sys: All platforms
    
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    I. Description
    
    The L0pht has received reports regarding a vulnerability in some
    implementations of Domino based applications which result in the internet
    publication of sensitive information belonging to customers of Lotus/IBM
    and their business partners.  This information is widely available to
    anyone with a web browser and includes such things as credit card numbers,
    addresses, phone numbers, etc.  The information about this vulnerability
    has been posted to various public mailing lists and newsgroups.
    
    The vulnerability affects websites created by Lotus Business Partners who
    provide training services and accept credit card numbers via the web;
    however, in theory the vulnerabilities could extend to any e-Commerce
    site.  Several Lotus' Business Partners were confirmed to be affected by
    this.
    
    This advisory does not attempt to place blame on the software vendor or on
    the application developers.  Many will see this as a flaw in the design or
    documentation of the product and many will see this as ignorance on the
    part of the web site builders. This advisory is designed to alert
    consumers that they should be wary on putting sensitive information into
    internet web applications.  The consumer has no way of knowing if the web
    application has been designed to correctly protect that data from
    anonymous internet access.
    
    II. Details
    
    Web users can navigate to the portion of the site used for processing
    registration and/or payment information and remove everything to the right
    of the database name in the URL (the databases typically end in .nsf.) In
    one example of this vulnerability, all the database views were then
    exposed which included a view containing previous registrations and a view
    containing "All Documents".  These views could then be accessed by
    clicking on the link and browsing the data within the view (typically
    consisting of business and customer names, addresses, phone numbers, and
    payment information.)
    
    In another example, the views were protected from direct browsing, but
    could still be searched using the standard URL format for searches in
    Domino.  This particular method would then allow the database to be
    searched for everyone who paid with a specific credit card or everyone who
    lives within a certain city.
    
    II a.  To Test
    
    Navigate through a Domino site, and once a database has been accessed,
    remove the information after the .nsf or after the first set of numbers
    following the server portion of the URL and replace it with "?Open".  If
    you are then presented with a list of views, your site is potentially
    vulnerable to having anonymous users access the information contained
    within the views listed.  Lotus recommends blocking this access through a
    $$ViewTemplateDefault.  If this technique is used, the second
    vulnerability comes into play, which is to access the view by using the
    following URL format:
    
    http://www.server.com/database.nsf/viewname?SearchView&Query="*"
    
    This technique will bypass the $$ViewTemplateDefault if the database is
    full-text indexed.  Many full text indexed sites were found vulnerable to
    this "feature" that their developers didn't plan for.
    
    III. Solution
    
    The sites affected could have been protected using reader and author names
    fields to prevent unauthorized access to their client's sensitive data.
    The internal registration views could've been hidden from anonymous users.
    They should've included a $$SearchTemplateDefault with no $$ViewBody field
    to block any unwelcome searching.  Additionally, every Domino site should
    disallow anonymous access for at least these databases:  names.nsf;
    catalog.nsf; log.nsf; domlog.nsf; domcfg.nsf.
    
    For specific questions about this advisory, please contact nardoat_private
    
    
    
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    For more L0pht (that's L - zero - P - H - T) advisories check out:
    http://www.l0pht.com/advisories.html
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