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Ryan Naraine, Emil Protalinski and Dancho Danchev

Exploit code published for Apache Tomcat flaw

By | August 21, 2008, 9:22am PDT

Summary: The United States Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) has raised an alarm for a serious vulnerability in Apache Tomcat, warning that a proof-of-concept exploit is publicly available. The code, posted to Milw0rm.com, exploits a directory traversal vulnerability vulnerability in the way Apache Tomcat handles malformed requests. From the advisory: If a context is configured with allowLinking=”true” and the [...]

Exploit code published for Apache Tomcat flawThe United States Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) has raised an alarm for a serious vulnerability in Apache Tomcat, warning that a proof-of-concept exploit is publicly available.

The code, posted to Milw0rm.com, exploits a directory traversal vulnerability vulnerability in the way Apache Tomcat handles malformed requests.

From the advisory:

  • If a context is configured with allowLinking=”true” and the connector is configured with URIEncoding=”UTF-8″ then a malformed request may be used to access arbitrary files on the server.

The vulnerability (CVE-2008-2938) affects Apache Tomcat versions 4.1.0-4.1.37, 5.5.0-5.5.26, and 6.0.0-6.0.16.

The open-source group has shipped a fix in Apache Tomcat 6.0.18, an update that also fixes three additional security issues:

CVE-2008-1232 (cross-site scripting): The message argument of HttpServletResponse.sendError() call is not only displayed on the error page, but is also used for the reason-phrase of HTTP response. This may include characters that are illegal in HTTP headers. It is possible for a specially crafted message to result in arbitrary content being injected into the HTTP response. For a successful XSS attack, unfiltered user supplied data must be included in the message argument. This affects 6.0.0 - 6.0.16

CVE-2008-1947 (cross-site scripting): The Host Manager web application did not escape user provided data before including it in the output. This enabled a XSS attack. This application now filters the data before use. This issue may be mitigated by logging out (closing the browser) of the application once the management tasks have been completed.

CVE-2008-2370 (information disclosure): When using a RequestDispatcher the target path was normalised before the query string was removed. A request that included a specially crafted request parameter could be used to access content that would otherwise be protected by a security constraint or by locating it in under the WEB-INF directory. This affects: 6.0.0 - 6.0.16.

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Topics

Ryan Naraine is a journalist and social media enthusiast specializing in Internet and computer security issues.

Disclosure

Ryan Naraine

The most important disclosure is of my employment with Kaspersky Lab as a member of the global research and analysis team. Kaspersky Lab is a global company specializing in anti-malware and secure content management technologies. I do not own stocks or other investments in any technology company.

Biography

Ryan Naraine

Ryan Naraine is a journalist and social media enthusiast specializing in Internet and computer security issues. He is currently security evangelist at Kaspersky Lab, an anti-malware company with operations around the globe. He is taking a leadership role in developing the company's online community initiative around secure content management technologies.

Prior to joining Kaspersky Lab, Ryan was Editor-at-Large/Security at eWEEK, leading the magazine's and Web site's coverage of Internet and computer security issues and managing the popular SecurityWatch blog, covering the daily threats, vulnerabilities and IT security technologies. He also covered IT security, hacker attacks and secure content management topics for Jupiter Media's internetnetnews.com.

Ryan can be reached at naraine SHIFT 2 gmail.com. For daily updates on Ryan's activities, follow him on Twitter.

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Anyone who calls Apache a "toy"...
bmerc 22nd Aug 2008
...is either a troll or completely ignorant.
How stupid do you have to be to think that the vast majority of web traffic comes from a "toy"?
When I read the % of un-patched open source machines out there.....

All I can say is, where is the FUD

Guess what, it's software, it'll FUBAR

Software is NOT a Religion!!!!
0 Votes
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What are you talking about?
bjbrock 21st Aug 2008
What does religion have to do with anything. or 98% for that matter.
0 Votes
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F/OSS vs. Proprietary...
Confused by religion 21st Aug 2008
... number and severity of vulnerabilities is ALWAYS a religious war.

Where have you been?
0 Votes
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Just another ASSumption...
storm14k 21st Aug 2008
...by one of those folks that can't stand OSS as if it has done something to them lmao.
0 Votes
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How about...quicker than these?!!
techboy_z 21st Aug 2008
These here been unfixed a looong time!

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1708

Enjoy.
in comparison with Apache?
0 Votes
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Thanks to Apache...
storm14k 21st Aug 2008
...following their model is what cut down on the IIS exploits. Glad to see it payed off for them.
0 Votes
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Nothing like unsubstantiated FUD
tonymcs@... 21st Aug 2008
I'll stick with IIS, you stick with the toy without the bells and whistles and pray your OSS manager knows what patching is.
0 Votes
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I see you like second place...
storm14k 22nd Aug 2008
You stick with the second place web server and I'll stick with the leader. I don't use Tomcat..I use Apache.

Also theres no FUD in something blatantly obvious. Modularity and text based configuration came from Apache.
0 Votes
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...is either a troll or completely ignorant.
How stupid do you have to be to think that the vast majority of web traffic comes from a "toy"?
0 Votes
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Pfff.. does that matter?
TedKraan 22nd Aug 2008
Who uses IIS for serious business anyways?
0 Votes
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Nobody
storm14k 22nd Aug 2008
Its a toy for intranet applications.

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