Re: <victim>server formmail.pl exploit in the wild

From: Andrew Daviel (andrewat_private)
Date: Fri Apr 12 2002 - 16:02:31 PDT

  • Next message: Matt Scarborough: "Re: Probes to previously accessed FTPs and UNCs in XP"

    On Fri, 12 Apr 2002, Chris Murley wrote:
    
    > So, we wrote a wrapper that checks to see hom many emails the cgi is tring
    > to send to, if it's more than 4, we stop the email from going out.
    
    The attempts I saw in the last week were coming from all over; many 
    unresolved (probably Far East) addresses. One guy on Earthlink was very 
    persistant.
    
    I saw some attempts trying to send to 30 recipients, but most were going 
    to one or sometimes two. The AOL fraud attempts were sending the 
    same message from a variety of different addresses.
    
    While an enumerated list of recipients can be used, that adds a 
    maintenance problem in adding new users.
    
    One idea that occurred to me was to set a cookie in a CGI-generated 
    no-cache web bug (or small icon) that the user would include with their form. The mail 
    script would check for the correct cookie. It could be a one-time unique 
    cookie, or a random string, perhaps hashed from the server address. 
    Anything could be defeated on a one-time basis, but it would take a bit of effort.
    
    Or, more simply, your users could be told to set a particular hidden 
    form value and the script set to require it. Clearly an abuser would be 
    able to read the HTML and set the value, but it would block the vast 
    majority of automated abuse ( send to http://some.org/cgi-bin/formmail.pl
    with recipient=dropbox and subject=http://some.org/cgi-bin/formmail.pl, 
    then just build a list from the incoming mail)
    
     -- 
    Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada
    Tel. +1 (604) 222-7376
    securityat_private
    
    
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