CNN Travel.cnn.com XSS and Ads.cnn.com Open Redirect Web Security Vulnerabilities
Domain:
http://cnn.com
"The
Cable News Network (CNN) is an American basic cable and satellite
television channel that is owned by the Turner Broadcasting System
division of Time Warner. The 24-hour cable news channel was founded in
1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was
the first television channel to provide 24-hour news coverage, and was
the first all-news television channel in the United States. While the
news channel has numerous affiliates, CNN primarily broadcasts from the
Time Warner Center in New York City, and studios in Washington, D.C. and
Los Angeles, its headquarters at the CNN Center in Atlanta is only used
for weekend programming. CNN is sometimes referred to as CNN/U.S. to
distinguish the American channel from its international sister network,
CNN International. As of August 2010, CNN is available in over 100
million U.S. households. Broadcast coverage of the U.S. channel extends
to over 890,000 American hotel rooms, as well as carriage on cable and
satellite providers throughout Canada. Globally, CNN programming airs
through CNN International, which can be seen by viewers in over 212
countries and territories. As of February 2015, CNN is available to
approximately 96,289,000 cable, satellite and, telco television
households (82.7% of households with at least one television set) in the
United States." (Wikipedia)
Discovered and Reported by:
Wang Jing, Division of Mathematical Sciences (MAS), School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (SPMS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. (@justqdjing)
http://www.tetraph.com/wangjing/
Vulnerability Description:
CNN
has a cyber security bug problem. It cab be exploited by XSS (Cross
Site Scripting) and Open Redirect (Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards)
attacks.
Based on news published, CNN users were hacked based on both Open Redirect and XSS vulnerabilities.
According
to E Hacker News on June 06, 2013, (@BreakTheSec) came across a diet
spam campaign that leverages the open redirect vulnerability in one of
the top News organization CNN.
After the attack, CNN takes
measures to detect Open Redirect vulnerabilities. The measure is quite
good during the tests. Almost no links are vulnerable to Open Redirect
attack on CNN's website, now. It takes long time to find a new Open
Redirect vulnerability that is un-patched on its website.
CNN.com was hacked by Open Redirect in 2013. While the XSS attacks happened in 2007.
<1> "The
tweet apparently shows cyber criminals managed to leverage the open
redirect security flaw in the CNN to redirect twitter users to the Diet
spam websites."
Figure from ehackingnews.com
At
the same time, the cybercriminals have also leveraged a similar
vulnerability in a Yahoo domain to trick users into thinking that the
links point to a trusted website.
Yahoo Open Redirects Vulnerabilities:
<2> CNN.com XSS hacked
Several
other similar products 0-day vulnerabilities have been found by some
other bug hunter researchers before. CNN has patched some of
them. BugTraq is a full disclosure moderated mailing list for the
*detailed* discussion and announcement of computer security
vulnerabilities: what they are, how to exploit them, and how to fix
them. The below things be posted to the Bugtraq list: (a) Information on
computer or network related security vulnerabilities (UNIX, Windows NT,
or any other). (b) Exploit programs, scripts or detailed processes
about the above. (c) Patches, workarounds, fixes. (d) Announcements,
advisories or warnings. (e) Ideas, future plans or current works dealing
with computer/network security. (f) Information material regarding
vendor contacts and procedures. (g) Individual experiences in dealing
with above vendors or security organizations. (h) Incident advisories or
informational reporting. (i) New or updated security tools. A large
number of the fllowing web securities have been published here, Buffer
overflow, HTTP Response Splitting (CRLF), CMD Injection, SQL injection,
Phishing, Cross-site scripting, CSRF, Cyber-attack, Unvalidated
Redirects and Forwards, Information Leakage, Denial of Service, File
Inclusion, Weak Encryption, Privilege Escalation, Directory Traversal,
HTML Injection, Spam. It also publishes suggestions, advisories,
solutions details related to XSS and URL Redirection vulnerabilities and
cyber intelligence recommendations.
(1) CNN (cnn.com) Travel-City Related Links XSS (cross site scripting) Web Security Bugs
Domain:
travel.cnn.com/
Vulnerability Description:
The programming bug flaws occur at "/city/all" pages. All links under this URL are vulnerable to XSS attacks, e.g
XSS
may allow a remote attacker to create a specially crafted request that
would execute arbitrary script code in a user's browser session within
the trust relationship between their browser and the server. Base on
Acunetix, exploited XSS is commonly used to achieve the following
malicious results
- Identity theft
- Accessing sensitive or restricted information
- Gaining free access to otherwise paid for content
- Spying on user’s web browsing habits
- Altering browser functionality
- Public defamation of an individual or corporation
- Web application defacement
- Denial of Service attacks
The
code programming flaw can be exploited without user login. Tests were
performed on Firefox (34.0) in Ubuntu (14.04) and IE (9.0.15) in Windows
7.
PoC:
(1.1) Poc Video:
(2) CNN cnn.com ADS Open Redirect Web Security Bug
Domain:
ads.cnn.com
Vulnerability Description:
The programming code flaw occurs at "event.ng" page with "&Redirect" parameter, i.e.
From
OWASP, an open redirect is an application that takes a parameter and
redirects a user to the parameter value without any validation. This
vulnerability is used in phishing attacks to get users to visit
malicious sites without realizing it. This could allow a user to create a
specially crafted URL, that if clicked, would redirect a victim from
the intended legitimate web site to an arbitrary web site of the
attacker's choosing. Such attacks are useful as the crafted URL
initially appear to be a web page of a trusted site. This could be
leveraged to direct an unsuspecting user to a web page containing
attacks that target client side software such as a web browser or
document rendering programs.
The
vulnerabilities can be attacked without user login. Tests were
performed on Microsoft IE (10.0.9200.16750) of Windows 8, Mozilla
Firefox (34.0) & Google Chromium 39.0.2171.65-0 ubuntu0.14.04.1.1064
(64-bit) of Ubuntu (14.04)，Apple Safari 6.1.6 of Mac OS X Lion 10.7.
(2.1) Use the following tests to illustrate the scenario painted above.
Vulnerable URL:
POC:
Since CNN is well-known worldwide, this vulnerability can be used to do "Covert Redirect" attacks to other websites.
(2.1) Poc Video:
