Home / vulnerabilities corehttp.txt
Posted on 23 December 2009
Source : packetstormsecurity.org Link
Package name: CoreHTTP server
Version: 0.5.3.1 and below (as long as cgi support is enabled)
Software URL: http://corehttp.sourceforge.net/
Exploit: http://aconole.brad-x.com/programs/corehttp_cgienabled.rb
Issue: CoreHTTP server fails to properly sanitize input before calling popen()
and allows an attacker using a standard web browser to execute arbitrary
commands.
NOTE: depending on the script and directory permissions, the attacker
may not be able to view output.
Further Discussion: During code review / debugging of CoreHTTP, a look at http.c
source file revealed:
/* escape the url for " and since we use it in popen */
for (i = 0; i < PATHSIZE; i++) {
if (url[i] == ' ') break;
else if (url[i] == '\' || url[i] == '"' || url[i] == ''') {
find = url + i;
strcpy(temp, find);
*find = '\';
*(find+1) = ' ';
strcat(url, temp);
i++;
}
}
In the above, only " and are escaped, allowing one to specify |`& and any
other special formatting.
The URL then gets broken into 2 parts:
- url (which in this case is a script)
- args (which contains our 'evil' buffer)
There is a caveat though:
if (c == 0) { /* TODO our dirlist perl script takes the path
of the dir as the arg. the way we do cgi
right now is scipt.pl?arg turns into
commandprompt> ./script.pl arg. obviously
when urlencode is implemented correctly this
must be changed. */
strcpy(args, url);
strcpy(url, DIRLIST);
break;
}
In this, we can see that DIRLIST overwrites the value of url and url overwrites
the value of args - so for simple directory listing this vulnerability becomes
a bit more difficult to exploit (depending on directory name, the system could
still be vulnerable).
Finally, here's the call to popen:
} else if (cmd[0] != ' ') { /* if its dynamic content */
pipe(pipefd); /* make pipe then fork */
c = fork();
if (c > 0) { /* original, keep going */
close(pipefd[1]); /* no need to write */
sprocket->fd = pipefd[0];
SetNonBlock(sprocket->fd);
} else if (c == 0) { /* child, popen */
close(pipefd[0]); /* no need to read */
pipetoprog = popen(cmd, "r");
/* fread should be non-blocking for this to exit fast
when parent proc closes pipe */
while ((i = fread(temp, 1, BUFSIZE, pipetoprog)) != 0
&& write(pipefd[1], temp, i) > 0);
pclose(pipetoprog);
close(pipefd[1]);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); /* exit after done */
} else { /* failed */
RemoveSprock(sprocket, &FIRSTSPROCK);
return NULL;
}
And there you have it. Simply download coreHTTP for yourself, build, enable CGI,
touch foo.pl and then send it a request for /foo.pl%60command%26%60 which will
set url to /foo.pl and args to `command&` and call popen. Voila!
