• Web vulnerabilities, both server-side and client-side
• Server-side SQL injection
• Cross-Site Scripting, Cross-Site Request Forgery

SQL Injection is a server-side code injection vulnerability resulting from improper (unsanitized) input directly concatenated into SQL queries. Typical server queries are built as strings:

sql = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE item = '" + user_input_variable + "' <other expressions>";
database.query(sql);

Note that the user may choose to escape the SQL quotes and alter the SQL statement, e.g.:

user_input_variable = "' OR 1=1 -- "; // example input given by the user
sql = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE item = '' OR 1=1 -- ' <other expressions>";

An SQL injection exploit ultimately depends on the target SQL expression (which is usually unknown to the attacker) and query result behavior (whether the query contents arem displayed on screen or the user is blind, errors reported etc.).

Make sure to check those cheatsheets out:
https://github.com/swisskyrepo/PayloadsAllTheThings/tree/master/SQL%20Injection
and:
https://github.com/swisskyrepo/PayloadsAllTheThings/blob/master/SQL%20Injection/MySQL%20Injection.md

The SQL injection is a popular server-side code injection vulnerability, but there are many mistakes that a website developer / system administrator can make (expect to find some of them in your homework :P ):

• code injection (LDAP, eval, shell execution etc.);
• broken authentication or access control (authorization);
• sensitive data exposure (e.g., backups / keys forgotten inside web root);
• path traversal;
• server misconfiguration;
• and many more

There are even free or commercial web vulnerability scanners for testing a server's sercurity!

Browsers are now among the most targeted pieces of software on the Internet. This is mainly because of the large threat vector resulting from the complexity of the web ecosystem, requiring features such as fancy HTML+CSS rendering, animation and even sandboxed, untrusted JavaScript code execution.

Even when the browsers do a good job at protecting against attacks, sometimes trusted websites themselved may contain bugs that directly affect the security of their users.

A major threat, Cross Site Scripting (XSS) is a JavaScript code injection vulnerability where an attacker that found a way to post public HTML scripts into an unprotected website (e.g., by using comments forms or forum responses). Those scripts, if served to other visitors, will execute with the credentials of their respective users, making it possible for the attacker to scam, exfiltrate personal data or even push malware into the victim's PC.

Another typical client-side vulnerability that the web developers need to protect their websites against is Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF). In this attack, the victim is tricked into opening an attacker-controlled web page which then issues custom requests (either using concealed elements that do external requests - img, form, or by using JavaScript / AJAX) to another (target) website. The browser will happily make the requests using the target domain's cookies and credentials. If the target website has URLs that execute certain actions (e.g., POST https://my-blog/post.php) without verifying the source of the request, any malicious page can execute them. Note that the attacker cannot see the results of those requests (unless authorized by CORS headers by the target). In practice, any URL endpoint executing sensitive actions needs to be protected using either referer validation or CSRF tokens.

You will be using a OpenStack VM for your tasks.

Remember that the instances have private IPs, 10.9.x.y, inaccessible from anywhere but the campus network. Since we need to use a local browser to access a web server running inside the VM, we will employ a SSH tunnelling + proxy trick to accomplish this.

First, copy your private key from fep to your workstation (since authentication with the VM will be realized from your PC)
(either do this, or assign a key existing on your machine to your OpenStack account and VM instance):

scp <first.lastname>@fep.grid.pub.ro:.ssh/id_rsa ~/.ssh/fep_rsa  # (for *nixes)
chmod 700 ~/.ssh/fep_rsa  # required on *nix systems

Make sure to replace id_rsa from the remote server (fep) with your actual key name (if you didn't use the default one). If you're on Windows / not WSL, please download the key to a path inside your home (last scp argument).

Connect to the VM using (ssh on Linux / WSL):

ssh -i <fep key path> -L "8080:localhost:8080" -o 'ProxyCommand=ssh <first.lastname>@fep.grid.pub.ro -W %h:%p' student@10.9.X.Y
# after entering the password for fep and trusting the server's public key,
# you should see the 'student@host:~$' prompt!

If you use OpenSSH for Windows, you must use the full path for ProxyCommand:

ssh -i <fep key path> -L "8080:localhost:8080" -o "ProxyCommand=C:\Windows\System32\OpenSSH\ssh.exe <first.lastname>@fep.grid.pub.ro -W %h:%p" student@10.9.X.Y

This uses fep.grid.pub.ro as a proxy (-W is stdin/stdout forwarding), successfully connecting to the SSH server running on the OpenStack VM (inaccessible otherwise) and requesting it to forward (-L <local addr:port>:<remote addr:port>) its HTTP server port (localhost:8080) back to your physical machine (same port, for convenience)!

Note: replace the <fep key path>, <first.lastname> and X.Y placeholders with the actual path to your SSH key / username / VM IP address!
You can use the same trick to forward any port from a OpenStack VM to your local host!

• Start the web server by using the following sequence:

  # First, start the MySQL instance in background
  docker run -d --rm --name mysql ropubisc/lab08-mysql
  # Wait until the MySQL server fully starts:
  docker logs mysql -f 
  # Ctrl+C and continue when it says: 'mysqld: ready for connections.'
   
  # Finally, start the sample web server
  docker run -it --link mysql:mysql -p 8080:8080 ropubisc/lab08-web-server

• Connect to the application using http://localhost:8080/ (assuming you forwarded the port correctly)
• Now: You don't know any user / password for this website. Try to log in using SQL Injection!
• Hint: Try the apostrophe in one of the login fields, check if it shows an error!
• If you ever want to exit the MySQL server:

  docker kill mysql

• Start the web server from the first task again.
• What if I told you there is a hidden flag inside the database? Find it!
• Hint: where do you have query feedback inside the application? try to do an UNION hack!
• Note: for UNION to work, you must SELECT exactly the same number of columns as in the original query!
  Check out the cheatsheets from the Background section (search for the GROUP_CONCAT technique) and here's a UNION example:

  SELECT col1, col2... FROM tablename WHERE name='' UNION SELECT 1, 2, ...  -- bruteforce the number of columns! '
                                                  ^ note: USER INPUT starts here!

  (don't type this into the input field, extract the relevant parts!)

• Hint: first, you need to discover the names of tables in the database (to avoid extra steps, the schema name is journalapp); afterwards, find the column containing the flag, then extract it!
• Note: use spaces instead of pluses (+) from the commands in the cheatsheet! e.g., UNION SELECT …, GROUP_CONCAT(…) FROM …

• You can still save the day: cover the monster's mouth (you can use the image at http://localhost:8080/images/muzzle.png)!
• Since HTML is allowed, you can also inject a JavaScript alert, example:

  <script>alert("XSS!");</script>

• Hint: You can use absolute element positioning, e.g.: <div style=“position: absolute; top: -300px;left:100px;”> insert your img here </div>. Try it with the browser's developer console / inspect element first before injecting it inside a message ;)

• The objective is to fool your victim using an external website (simulated using a local .html page) to post an attacker-controller message into the website.
• On your local station, as the attacker: create a simple HTML page that posts a hidden message to http://localhost:8080/journal/post; this will be equivalent to hosting a malicious website;
• Hint: Check the HTML of the website for a <form> example!
• Hint: Use an input with type="hidden"
• Switching sides (you're the victim, now): open that HTML page using your web browser. Click a button and the hidden message will be posted ;)
• (Make sure you are logged in inside the web app before doing the attack!)
• For bonus, you can try to do a cross-site AJAX posting the message automatically (without requiring user interaction!).

• Can you steal the source code of the server-side code using HTTP only?
• Once you found it, try to find the database credentials!
• Hint: try to guess the path to a common file that all NodeJS projects have! It may reference the main script's name!
• Also try it by using a tool: nikto, apt install nikto

Please take a minute to fill in the feedback form for this lab.