10.4. Information Disclosure

The more bad guys know about your system, the easier it becomes to find a way to compromise it. Information disclosure refers to the family of flaws that reveal inside information.

10.4.1. HTML Source Code

There is more in HTML pages than most people see. A thorough analysis of HTML page source code can reveal useful information. The structure of the source code is itself important because it can tell a lot about the person who wrote it. You can judge that person's design and programming skills and learn what to expect.

HTML comments

You can commonly find comments in HTML code. For web designers, it is the only place for comments other designers can see. Even programmers, who should be writing comments in code and not in HTML (comments in code are never sent to browsers) sometimes make a mistake and put in information that should not be there.

JavaScript code

The JavaScript code can reveal even more about the coder's personality. Parts of the code that deal with data validation can reveal information about application business rules. Programmers sometimes fail to implement data validation on the server side, relying on the client-side JavaScript instead. Knowing the business rules makes it easier to test for boundary cases.

Tool comments and metadata

Tools used to create pages often put comments in the code. Sometimes they reveal paths on the filesystem. You can identify the tool used, which may lead to other discoveries (see the "Predictable File Locations" section below).

10.4.2. Directory Listings

A directory listing is a dynamically generated page showing the contents of a requested folder. Web servers creating such listings are only trying to be helpful, and they usually do so only after realizing the default index file (index.html, index.php, etc.) is absent. Directory listings are sometimes served to the client even when a default index file exists, as a result of web server vulnerability. This happens to be one of the most frequent Apache problems, as you can see from the following list of releases and their directory listing vulnerabilities. (The Common Vulnerability and Exposure numbers are inside the parentheses; see http://cve.mitre.org.)

• v1.3.12 Requests can cause directory listing on NT (CVE-2000-0505).

• v1.3.17 Requests can cause directory listing to be displayed (CVE-2001-0925).

• v1.3.20 Multiviews can cause a directory listing to be displayed (CVE-2001-0731).

• v1.3.20 Requests can cause directory listing to be displayed on Win32 (CVE-2001-0729).

A directory-listing service is not needed in most cases and should be turned off. Having a web server configured to produce directory listings where they are not required should be treated as a configuration error.

The problem with directory listings is in what they show, coupled with how people behave:

• Many people do not understand that the absence of a link pointing to a file does not protect the file from those who know it is there.

• Some people do know but think no one will find out (they are too lazy to set up a proper environment for sharing files).

• Files are created by mistake (for example, file editors often create backup files), or are left there by mistake (for example, "I'll put this file here just for a second and delete it later").

In the worst-case scenario, a folder used exclusively to store files for download (some of which are private) will be left without a default file. The attacker only needs to enter the URL of the folder to gain access to the full list of files. Turning directory listings off (using Options -Indexes, as shown in Chapter 2) is essential, but it is not a complete solution, as you will see soon.

10.4.2.1 WebDAV

Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV), defined at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2518.txt, is an extension of the HTTP protocol. It consists of several new request methods that are added on top of HTTP to allow functionality such as search (for files), copy, and delete. Left enabled on a web site, WebDAV will allow anyone to enumerate files on the site, even with all directory indexes in place or directory listings turned off.

What follows is a shortened response from using telnet to connect to a web site that contains only three files (the root folder counts as one) and then sending the PROPFIND request (new with WebDAV) asking for the contents of the web server root folder. Users browsing normally would get served index.html as the home page but you can see how WebDAV reveals the existence of the file secret.data. I have emphasized the parts of the output that reveal the filenames.

$ telnet ivanristic.com 8080
Trying 217.160.182.153...
Connected to ivanristic.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
PROPFIND / HTTP/1.0
Depth: 1
   
HTTP/1.1 207 Multi-Status
Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 19:21:32 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.49 (Unix) DAV/2 PHP/4.3.4
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
   
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<D:multistatus xmlns:D="DAV:">
<D:response xmlns:lp1="DAV:" xmlns:lp2="http://apache.org/dav/props/">
<D:href>/</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
...
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
<D:response xmlns:lp1="DAV:" xmlns:lp2="http://apache.org/dav/props/">
<D:href>/secret.data</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
...
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
<D:response xmlns:lp1="DAV:" xmlns:lp2="http://apache.org/dav/props/">
<D:href>/index.html</D:href>
<D:propstat>
<D:prop>
...
</D:prop>
<D:status>HTTP/1.1 200 OK</D:status>
</D:propstat>
</D:response>
</D:multistatus>

Information disclosure through WebDAV is a configuration error (WebDAV should never be enabled for the general public). I mention it here because the consequences are similar to those of providing unrestricted directory listings. Some Linux distributions used to ship with WebDAV enabled by default, resulting in many sites unwillingly exposing their file listings to the public.

10.4.3. Verbose Error Messages

"Secure by default" is not a concept appreciated by many application server vendors who deliver application servers in developer-friendly mode where each error results in a detailed message being displayed in the browser. Administrators are supposed to change the configuration before deployment but they often do not do so.

This behavior discloses a lot of information that would otherwise be invisible to an attacker. It allows attackers to detect other flaws (e.g., configuration flaws) and to learn where files are stored on the filesystem, leading to successful exploitation.

A correct strategy to deal with this problem is as follows. (See Chapter 2 for technical details.)

If all else fails (you have to live with an application that behaves incorrectly and you cannot change it), a workaround is possible with Apache 2 and mod_security. Using output filtering (described in Chapter 12), error messages can be detected and replaced with less dangerous content before the response is delivered to the client.

10.4.4. Debug Messages

Programmers often need a lot of information from an application to troubleshoot problems. This information is often presented at the bottom of each page when the application is being executed in debug mode. The information displayed includes:

• Application configuration parameters (which may include passwords)

• System environment variables

• Request details (IP addresses, headers, request parameters)

• Information that resulted from processing the request, such as script variables, or SQL queries

• Various log messages

The effect of all this being disclosed to someone other than a developer can be devastating. The key question is, how is an application getting into debug mode?

Special request parameters

Programmers often use special request parameters, which work across the application. When such a method becomes known (and it often does) anyone appending the parameter (for example debug=1) to a URL can change into the debug mode.

Special request parameters with passwords

A slightly better approach is to use a password to protect the debug mode. Although better, chances are programmers will use a default password that does not change across application installations.

Automatic debug mode based on IP address

When a programming team sits behind a fixed set of IP addresses, they often configure the application to display debugging information automatically, upon detecting a "trusted" visitor. This approach is common for internal teams developing custom applications.

Session-based debug mode

One of the safer approaches is to have debug mode as one of the application privileges and assign the privilege to certain accounts. This approach represents a good compromise and delegates debug mode authorization to central authorization code, where such a decision belongs.

My recommendation is to have the debug mode turned off completely for production systems (and when I say turned off, I mean commented out of the source code).

Alternatively, a special request parameter (password-protected) can be used as an indicator that debug mode is needed, but the information would be dumped to a place (such as a log file) where only a developer can access it.