78
Related Attack Patterns
CAPEC-ID Attack Pattern Name
6 Argument Injection
15 Command Delimiters
43 Exploiting Multiple Input Interpretation Layers
88 OS Command Injection
108 Command Line Execution through SQL Injection
References
[REF-140]Greg Hoglund and Gary McGraw. "Exploiting Software: How to Break Code". 2004
February 7. Addison-Wesley. < https://www.amazon.com/Exploiting-Software-How-Break-Code/
dp/0201786958 >.2023-04-07.
[REF-685]Pascal Meunier. "Meta-Character Vulnerabilities". 2008 February 0. < https://
web.archive.org/web/20100714032622/https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/cs390s/slides/
week09.pdf >.2023-04-07.
[REF-686]Robert Auger. "OS Commanding". 2009 June. < http://projects.webappsec.org/w/
page/13246950/OS%20Commanding >.2023-04-07.
[REF-687]Lincoln Stein and John Stewart. "The World Wide Web Security FAQ". 2002 February 4.
< https://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/wwwsf4.html >.2023-04-07.
[REF-688]Jordan Dimov, Cigital. "Security Issues in Perl Scripts". < https://www.cgisecurity.com/lib/
sips.html >.2023-04-07.
[REF-44]Michael Howard, David LeBlanc and John Viega. "24 Deadly Sins of Software Security".
McGraw-Hill. 2010.
[REF-690]Frank Kim. "Top 25 Series - Rank 9 - OS Command Injection". 2010 February 4. SANS
Software Security Institute. < https://www.sans.org/blog/top-25-series-rank-9-os-commandinjection/
>.2023-04-07.
[REF-45]OWASP. "OWASP Enterprise Security API (ESAPI) Project". < http://www.owasp.org/
index.php/ESAPI >.
[REF-76]Sean Barnum and Michael Gegick. "Least Privilege". 2005 September 4. < https://
web.archive.org/web/20211209014121/https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/bsi/articles/knowledge/
principles/least-privilege >.2023-04-07.
[REF-62]Mark Dowd, John McDonald and Justin Schuh. "The Art of Software Security
Assessment". 1st Edition. 2006. Addison Wesley.
[REF-962]Object Management Group (OMG). "Automated Source Code Security Measure
(ASCSM)". 2016 January. < http://www.omg.org/spec/ASCSM/1.0/ >.
CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation
('Cross-site Scripting')
Weakness ID : 79
Structure : Simple
Abstraction : Base
CWE Version 4.14
CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During
Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') 164
Description
The product does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes user-controllable input before it is placed
in output that is used as a web page that is served to other users.
Extended Description
Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities occur when:
1. Untrusted data enters a web application, typically from a web request.
2. The web application dynamically generates a web page that contains this untrusted data.
3. During page generation, the application does not prevent the data from containing content
that is executable by a web browser, such as JavaScript, HTML tags, HTML attributes, mouse
events, Flash, ActiveX, etc.
4. A victim visits the generated web page through a web browser, which contains malicious
script that was injected using the untrusted data.
5. Since the script comes from a web page that was sent by the web server, the victim's web
browser executes the malicious script in the context of the web server's domain.
6. This effectively violates the intention of the web browser's same-origin policy, which states
that scripts in one domain should not be able to access resources or run code in a different
domain.
There are three main kinds of XSS:
• Type 1: Reflected XSS (or Non-Persistent) - The server reads data directly from the HTTP
request and reflects it back in the HTTP response. Reflected XSS exploits occur when an
attacker causes a victim to supply dangerous content to a vulnerable web application, which
is then reflected back to the victim and executed by the web browser. The most common
mechanism for delivering malicious content is to include it as a parameter in a URL that is
posted publicly or e-mailed directly to the victim. URLs constructed in this manner constitute
the core of many phishing schemes, whereby an attacker convinces a victim to visit a URL
that refers to a vulnerable site. After the site reflects the attacker's content back to the victim,
the content is executed by the victim's browser.
• Type 2: Stored XSS (or Persistent) - The application stores dangerous data in a database,
message forum, visitor log, or other trusted data store. At a later time, the dangerous data
is subsequently read back into the application and included in dynamic content. From an
attacker's perspective, the optimal place to inject malicious content is in an area that is
displayed to either many users or particularly interesting users. Interesting users typically
have elevated privileges in the application or interact with sensitive data that is valuable to
the attacker. If one of these users executes malicious content, the attacker may be able to
perform privileged operations on behalf of the user or gain access to sensitive data belonging
to the user. For example, the attacker might inject XSS into a log message, which might not
be handled properly when an administrator views the logs.
• Type 0: DOM-Based XSS - In DOM-based XSS, the client performs the injection of XSS into
the page; in the other types, the server performs the injection. DOM-based XSS generally
involves server-controlled, trusted script that is sent to the client, such as Javascript that
performs sanity checks on a form before the user submits it. If the server-supplied script
processes user-supplied data and then injects it back into the web page (such as with
dynamic HTML), then DOM-based XSS is possible.
Once the malicious script is injected, the attacker can perform a variety of malicious activities. The
attacker could transfer private information, such as cookies that may include session information,
from the victim's machine to the attacker. The attacker could send malicious requests to a web
site on behalf of the victim, which could be especially dangerous to the site if the victim has
administrator privileges to manage that site. Phishing attacks could be used to emulate trusted web
sites and trick the victim into entering a password, allowing the attacker to compromise the victim's
CWE Version 4.14
CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')
CWE-79: Improper Neutralization of Input During
Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting')