Ajax Fingerprinting for Web 2.0 Applications

Fingerprinting is an age old concept and one that adds great value to assessment methodologies. There are several tools available for fingerprinting operating systems (nmap), Web servers (httprint), devices, etc. Each one of these tools uses a different method – inspecting the TCP stack, ICMP responses, HTTP responses. With this evolution of Web 2.0 applications that use Ajax extensively, it is important to fingerprint Ajax tools, framework or library used by a particular web site or a page. This paper describes the method of doing Ajax fingerprinting with a simple prototype serving as an example.
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Detect Your Web Application's Vulnerabilities Early with Ruby

Web application fuzzing is a method of detecting a web application's vulnerabilities prior to deploying the application on a production system. Users of this approach send several malicious requests to the application and, based on the responses received, determine the application's security posture. Users also can apply fuzzing to perform tests on several different attack vectors such as SQL, XPATH, and LDAP injection, and error handling.

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Crawling Ajax-driven Web 2.0 Applications

Crawling web applications is one of the key phases of automated web application scanning. The objective of crawling is to collect all possible resources from the server in order to automate vulnerability detection on each of these resources. A resource that is overlooked during this discovery phase can mean a failure to detect some vulnerabilities. The introduction of Ajax throws up new challenges for the crawling engine. New ways of handling the crawling process are required as a result of these challenges. The objective of this paper is to use a practical approach to address this issue using rbNarcissus, Watir and Ruby.

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Book review - Microsoft Technet

Technet posted book review on Hacking web services
Here
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Shreeraj Shah's Hacking Web Services (Charles River Media, 2006) is a valuable resource for those involved in development, deployment, or support of Web services. The book is a well-organized general security reference for Web services and their component technologies. And it does a good job of detailing what is involved in defending them in your infrastructure and through your development practices.

The book begins with a relatively in-depth introduction to Web services A case study titled "The Consequences of Procrastination" teaches you about the power of preemptive security procedures and the penalties of reactive systems. The chapter titled "Web Services Scanning and Enumeration" discusses how to use the wsChess, a .NET-based Web service security toolkit from Net-Square (net-square.com/wschess/index.shtml), to profile and footprint Web services.

The book includes a utility CD, which contains a sample .NET-based application called SOAPWall. This shows you how to block injection characters and buffer overflows in your .NET Web services. In addition, the CD provides demos of different types of Web service attacks.
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XSRF attack vector with Ajax serialization

Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) is a commonly observed security issue in Web applications, and it can be exploited by an attacker or by a worm. Exploitation of this bug is very easy given there are several HTML tags and embedded JavaScript code snippets that can be leveraged by the browser to initiate a forged request without the consent or knowledge of an end user.

This request hits the vulnerable Web application like a cruise missile charged with the end user's session identity and the attacker's objective is achieved. This objective may be a request for a change of password, performing a financial transaction or sending forged email. A vulnerable Web 2.0 application can be susceptible to such an attack. With Web 2.0, another dimension is being added to this attack vector -- the blissfully unaware end user.

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Vulnerability Scanning Web 2.0 Client-Side Components

Web 2.0 applications are a combination of several technologies such as Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), Flash, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Representational State Transfer (REST). All these technologies, along with cross-domain information access, contribute to the complexity of the application. We are seeing a shift towards empowerment of an end-user's browser by loading libraries.

All these changes mean new scanning challenges for tools and professionals. The key learning objectives of this article are to understand the following concepts and techniques:

* Scanning complexity and challenges in new generation Web applications
* Web 2.0 client-side scanning objectives and methodology
* Web 2.0 vulnerability detection (XSS in RSS feeds)
* Cross-domain injection with JSON
* Countermeasures and defense through browser-side filtering

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Web 2.0 defense with Ajax fingerprinting & filtering

(IN)SECURE magazine contains my article on Ajax fingerprinting and filtering technique. It can help in defending Web 2.0 applications.

Top 10 Ajax Security Holes and Driving Factors

One of the central ingredients of Web 2.0 applications is Ajax encompassed by JavaScripts. This phase of evolution has transformed the Web into a superplatform. Not surprisingly, this transformation has also given rise to a new breed of worms and viruses such as Yamanner, Samy and Spaceflash. Portals like Google, NetFlix, Yahoo and MySpace have witnessed new vulnerabilities in the last few months. These vulnerabilities can be leveraged by attackers to perform Phishing, Cross-site Scripting (XSS) and Cross-Site Request Forgery (XSRF) exploitation.

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[O'reilly Net] Detecting Web Application Security Vulnerabilities

Your web application is only as secure as the data coming in, and how you treat user input determines how secure you are. A little bit of thought and Python programming can help you analyze potential vulnerabilities in your code

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How safe is Web 2.0?

Technology commentator Bill Thompson says the latest incarnation of the web, dubbed Web 2.0, is prone to the same flaws as its predecessor

[Top 10 Web 2.0 attack vectors are taken as reference]
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Hacking Web 2.0 Applications with Firefox

AJAX and interactive web services form the backbone of “web 2.0” applications. This technological transformation brings about new challenges for security professionals.

This article looks at some of the methods, tools and tricks to dissect web 2.0 applications (including Ajax) and discover security holes using Firefox and its plugins. The key learning objectives of this article are to understand the:

* web 2.0 application architecture and its security concerns.
* hacking challenges such as discovering hidden calls, crawling issues, and Ajax side logic discovery.
* discovery of XHR calls with the Firebug tool.
* simulation of browser event automation with the Chickenfoot plugin.
* debugging of applications from a security standpoint, using the Firebug debugger.
* methodical approach to vulnerability detection.

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On slashdot you can read reviews on HNS article - Top 10 Web 2.0 Attack Vectors

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Top 10 Web 2.0 attack vectors

Web 2.0 is the novel term coined for new generation Web applications. start.com, Google maps, Writely and MySpace.com are a few examples. The shifting technological landscape is the driving force behind these Web 2.0 applications. On the one hand are Web services that are empowering server-side core technology components and on the other hand are AJAX and Rich Internet Application (RIA) clients that are enhancing client-end interfaces in the browser itself.

XML is making a significant impact at both presentation and transport (HTTP/HTTPS) layers. To some extent XML is replacing HTML at the presentation layer while SOAP is becoming the XML-based transport mechanism of choice.

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Book - Hacking Web Services

Web Services are an integral part of next generation Web applications. The development and use of these services is growing at an incredible rate, and so too are the security issues surrounding them. Hacking Web Services is a practical guide for understanding Web services security and assessment methodologies. Written for intermediate-to-advanced security professionals and developers, the book provides an in-depth look at new concepts and tools used for Web services security. Beginning with a brief introduction to Web services technologies, the book discusses Web services assessment methodology, WSDL -- an XML format describing Web services as a set of endpoints operating on SOAP messages containing information -- and the need for secure coding. Various development issues and open source technologies used to secure and harden applications offering Web services are also covered. Throughout the book, detailed case studies, real-life demonstrations, and a variety of tips and techniques are used to teach developers how to write tools for Web services. If you are responsible for securing your company's Web services, this is a must read resource!

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Security Bugs Undercut Mozilla

New flaws leave experts wondering if Mozilla's such a great alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer and Exchange

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Auscert 2006 - Web Services Hacking...

AusCERT Asia Pacific
Information Technology Security Conference
21st - 26th May 2006 - Royal Pines Resort - Gold Coast, Australia
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Dallascon - Adavanced Web Services Hacking...

Presenting paper at Dallascon in first week of May.

DallasCon Information & Wireless Security conference
May 5-6, 2006
Richardson Hotel
Details

EUSecWest talk...

It was fun to be at EUSecWest. Talks and presentations were good. Justin made good notes on it. You can read it over here.

Day 1
Day 2

Releasing wschess 1.5

Following changes are included.

+ Few bugs are solved
+ wspawn is now querying Xmethods. UBRs are closed for Microsoft, IBM etc.
+ wsknight has analysis engine in place. You can supply regex patterns and wsaudit will detect them. It will change color of text. Sample rule file is included.

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Security Advisory - Microsoft ASP.NET Web Services

Unhandled exception leads to LDAP injection disclosure.
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