Geeklog XSS and CRLF Injection

From: Ulf Harnhammar (ulfhat_private)
Date: Thu Jul 18 2002 - 17:23:52 PDT

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    Geeklog XSS and CRLF Injection
    
    
    PROGRAM: Geeklog
    VENDOR: Tony Bibbs et al. <geeklog-develat_private>
    HOMEPAGE: http://geeklog.sourceforge.net/
    VULNERABLE VERSIONS: 1.3.5sr1, possibly earlier versions as well
    NOT VULNERABLE VERSIONS: 1.3.5sr2
    LOGIN REQUIRED: no
    SEVERITY: high
    
    
    DESCRIPTION:
    
    "Geeklog is a 'blog', otherwise known as a Weblog. It allows
    you to create your own virtual community area, complete with user
    administration, story posting, messaging, comments, polls, calendar,
    weblinks, and more! It can run on many different operating systems,
    and uses PHP4 and MySQL."
    
    (direct quote from the program's homepage)
    
    Geeklog is published under the terms of the GNU General Public
    License.
    
    
    SECURITY HOLES:
    
    1) Geeklog has got an XSS hole that affects both the stories and
    the comments. The program removes the HTML elements that are used
    for scripting, but it fails to remove the HTML attributes that are
    used for the same purpose, which leads to this hole.
    
    One example of an XSS attack would be:
    
    <b onMouseOver="self.location.href='http://localhost/geeklog/'">life
    has made her that much bolder now</b>
    
    When a victim moves the mouse pointer over the quote from "Lady
    Godiva's Operation", an intrinsic event occurs and the JavaScript
    code is executed.
    
    (There is also an XSS issue in the search engine. It was reported
    by §ome1, and not by me.)
    
    2) Geeklog has got a CRLF Injection hole in User Profile: Send
    Email. The users' mail addresses are meant to be secret, but by
    using this hole, you can get someone's mail address anyway.
    
    The problem is that you can add extra mail headers, by using a
    CRLF combination followed by an extra mail header in the Subject
    field. One way to add them is saving the HTML document with the
    form, and changing the <input type=text name=subject> tag to a
    textarea. After opening the edited document in a web browser, you
    enter a Subject line in the textarea, press Enter, and then you
    enter your extra mail header. When the mail is sent, that header
    will be included. If the header in question is "Bcc: <your own
    mail address>", the message will silently be copied to you, thus
    revealing the recipient's mail address without them knowing.
    
    I have described this type of problem in further detail
    in my "CRLF Injection" paper, which is available at
    http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/archive/bugtraq/2002/05/msg00079.html
    
    
    COMMUNICATION WITH VENDOR:
    
    The vendor was contacted on the 1st of July. Version 1.3.5sr2,
    which does not have any of these security holes (neither mine nor
    §ome1's), was released on the 9th of July.
    
    
    RECOMMENDATION:
    
    I recommend that all administrators upgrade to version 1.3.5sr2.
    
    
    // Ulf Harnhammar
    ulfhat_private
    



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