Re: recent 'cross site scripting' CERT advisory

From: Taneli Huuskonen (huuskoneat_private)
Date: Mon Feb 07 2000 - 23:59:56 PST

  • Next message: Torsten Landschoff: "Re: Debian (frozen): Perms on /usr/lib/libguile.so.6.0.0"

    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
    
    Ari Gordon-Schlosberg wrote:
    
    > [Bill Thompson <billat_private>]
    > > One form of protection from a truly *cross-site* attack that I didn't
    > > see mentioned in the CERT advisory is the trusty "HTTP_REFERER"
    [...]
    >
    > HTTP_REFERER is trivial to spoof, and it's likely that anyone perpetrating
    > a sophisticated attack would laugh at having to spoof the Referer: header.
    > It's a form of trusting the client, which is a big, huge, no-no.  It's okay
    
    Bill Thompson's comment makes sense in the following scenario.  Suppose
    a page on www.evil.com contained a link to www.trusted.com's login page,
    with something funny embedded in a query string.  Then an unsuspecting
    victim might be tricked into following the link and getting back a page
    with evil.com's javascript embedded in it.  Now, if trusted.com's
    webserver refused to serve anything else but the index page unless the
    Referer: field contained a trusted.com URL, this attack would be foiled.
    
    Now, is there a way to trick a browser into lying about the referrer?
    
    Taneli Huuskonen
    
    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
    Version: 2.6.3i
    Charset: noconv
    
    iQB1AwUBOJ/M9AUw3ir1nvhZAQEg2QL/VmBUGamGJACoVXCFG8n2G4OQCZk/wGrr
    j+wFyzKtFA1YFE6KoIV3I+msJ/QVZJJ8hk6n6Oy45Z5/KkCSdNTQFz7OV+c2v0ua
    Q/OXeo/4zUpZNl82Fgdx44rNxu21FkPY
    =INX4
    -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
    --
    I don't   | All messages will be PGP signed,  | Fight for your right to
    speak for | encrypted mail preferred.  Keys:  | use sealed envelopes.
    the Uni.  | http://www.helsinki.fi/~huuskone/ | http://www.gilc.org/
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Apr 13 2001 - 15:33:48 PDT