RE: [Full-Disclosure] Re: New Web Vulnerability - Cross-Site Tracing

From: Richard M. Smith (rmsat_private)
Date: Thu Jan 23 2003 - 14:48:08 PST

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    Steven,
    
    Do you know of any cases of cross-site scripting being used in the real
    world?  I looked around last fall some and couldn't find any examples
    being reported.
    
    XSS errors are real easy to make, so it is not surprising they are the
    2nd most frequently reported vulnerability.
    
    Richard
    
    -----Original Message-----
    From: full-disclosure-adminat_private
    [mailto:full-disclosure-adminat_private] On Behalf Of Steven M.
    Christey
    Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 5:18 PM
    To: bugtraqat_private; webappsecat_private;
    vulnwatchat_private; full-disclosureat_private
    Subject: [Full-Disclosure] Re: New Web Vulnerability - Cross-Site
    Tracing
    
    
    
    >The XSS plague?  The only XSS plague I know of is on Bugtraq and other
    >disclosure mailing lists.  Is anyone else sick of seeing posts about
    >XSS problems in PHP applications that runs on a total of five sites?
    
    XSS (including "HTML injection" for those who make such distinctions)
    was the 2nd most frequently reported vulnerability last year, behind
    buffer overflows, based on CVE statistics.  Many people still seem to
    think XSS is just about cookie theft.  While there may not be many
    publicly reported exploits of XSS issues, or of web client
    vulnerabilities in general, it seems likely that applications will
    become a more attractive target to hackers as it gets more difficult
    to break into servers.
    
    The fact that XSS frequently shows up in obscure applications is an
    indicator of how programmers are poorly trained with respect to this
    type of issue.  (I know the state of things is bad in general, but
    more programmers probably know about buffer overflows than XSS).
    Personally, I'm glad to see the contributions made by up-and-coming
    vulnerability auditors who get their start by auditing easier targets.
    They help to demonstrate how widespread the problems are while
    educating the affected developers in the process, who hopefully will
    not make the same mistakes again.
    
    > Code Red was a plague.  Melissa was a plague.
    
    Agreed; however, XSS worms have been theorized (see [1] for one
    variant), and widely deployed XSS-vulnerable applications like
    bulletin boards could be an unfortunate breeding ground.
    
    - Steve
    
    [1]
    http://online.securityfocus.com/archive/107/302027/2002-11-29/2002-12-05
    /0
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