Cross site scripting | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

An application layer or 'layer 7' distributed denial of service ( DDoS ) attacks is one of the most complicated web attack that disguised to look like legitimate traffic but targets specific areas of a website, making it even more difficult to detect and mitigate. Just Yesterday Cloud-based security service provider ' Incapsula ' detected a unique application layer DDoS attack, carried out using traffic hijacking techniques. DDoS attack flooded one of their client with over 20 million GET requests, originating from browsers of over 22,000 Internet users. What makes this case especially interesting is the fact that the attack was enabled by persistent XSS vulnerability in one of the world's largest and most popular site - one of the domains on Alexa's " Top 50 " list. XSS  vulnerability  to Large-Scale DDoS Attack Incapsula has not disclosed the name of vulnerable website for security reasons, but mentioned it as a high profile video content provider

Oren Hafif , a security researcher has discovered a critical vulnerability in the Password reset process of Google account that allows an attacker to hijack any account. He managed to trick Google users into handing over their passwords via a simple spear-phishing attack by leveraging a number of flaws i.e. Cross-site request forgery (CSRF), and cross-site scripting (XSS), and a flow bypass. In a proof of concept video demonstration, the attacker sends his victim a fake " Confirm account ownership " email, claiming to come from Google. The link mention in the mail instructs the recipient to confirm the ownership of the account and urged user to change their password. The link from the email apparently points to a HTTPS  google.com URL, but it actually leads the victim to the attacker's website because of CSRF attack with a customized email address. The Google HTTPS page will will ask the victim to confirm the ownership by entering his last password and then will ask to res

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

Today more and more companies are looking for external security researchers to help identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses in their applications through Bug Bounty Programs. While companies like Facebook and Google are paying out hundreds of dollars to researchers for reporting security vulnerabilities, But according to Yahoo! Your email's security worth only $12.50 ! Yahoo is not having very good run in the reputation department when it comes to user security. Researchers at High-Tech Bridge found a few bugs, and were not exactly impressed with Yahoo's reward. They pointed out cross-site scripting (XSS) flaws affecting two Yahoo domains and in return they received $12.50 bounties for each vulnerability they found. This amount was given as a discount code that can only be used in the Yahoo Company Store, which sells Yahoo's corporate T-shirts, cups, pens and other accessories. This isn't exactly a great reward for spending time reporting security vulnerabilities

Two Factor Authentication is becoming a standard in the enterprise security space in an attempt to dually secure end users against malicious attacks.  Following Dropbox, Google and virtually everyone else, LinkedIn added two-factor authentication to its login process today. LinkedIn will provide temporary codes for two-factor authentication  through SMS messages. The extra step is designed to lessen the chances of computer hackers breaking into user accounts. To turn on two-step verification on LinkedIn, hit the icon in the top-right corner of the site, click on "Privacy & Settings," and then on "Manage security settings" at the bottom. The site has provided instructions to its 225 million users on how to turn on the optional service. On other side, today @The_Pr0ph3t, whitehat Hacker from Spain reported a Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability in LinkedIn Developer site (developer.linkedin.com).  Flaw still exists on website at the time of writing, and hacker

When coders and online security researchers find errors in websites or software, the companies behind the programs will often pay out a bounty to the person who discovered the issue. The programs are intended to create an incentive for researchers to privately report issues and allow vendors to release fixes before hackers take advantage of flaws. A 17-year-old German student says he found a security flaw in PayPal's website but was denied a reward because he's too young. On PayPal's website, the company lists the terms for rewarding people who find bugs, but mentions nothing about the age of the discoverer.  The details of the vulnerability, i.e cross-site scripting flaw (XSS), is posted on Full Disclosure section. In Past we have seen that many times PayPal tried to cheat with new security researchers by replying various reasons on reporting bugs i.e "already reported by someone else", "domain / sub-domain is not under bounty program", &q

Nir Goldshlager , Founder/CEO at Break Security known for finding serious flaws in Facebook once again on The Hacker News for  sharing his new finding i.e Stored Cross-site Scripting (XSS) in Facebook Chat, Check In and Facebook Messenger. Stored Cross-site Scripting ( XSS ) is the most dangerous type of Cross Site Scripting. Web applications where the injected code is permanently stored on the target servers, such as in a database, in a message forum, visitor log, comment field, etc 1.) Stored XSS In Facebook Chat: This vulnerability can be used to conduct a number of browser-based attacks including, Hijacking another user's browser, Capturing sensitive information viewed by application users, Malicious code is executed by the user's browser etc. When a user starts a new message within Facebook that has a link inside, a preview GUI shows up for that post. The GUI is used for presenting the link post using a parameter i.e  attachment[params][title],attac

Cross site scripting vulnerabilities are mistakenly considered unimportant, but they could allow attackers to inject client-side script in web pages visited by victims. A cross-site scripting (xss) vulnerability may be exploited by hackers to bypass access controls going beyond the exceptions. An Egyptian information security advisor Ebrahim Hegazy (Zigoo) has found an XSS vulnerability in the Avira license daemon. license.avira.com But instead of exploiting it in a normal way " alert('MyName') " stuff and then reporting, He decided to demonstrate it to Avira security team in a different mode with the purposes to show how could an XSS vulnerability allows the hackers to steal user accounts with a clear text data! To demonstrate this attack he has created 4 files: avira.html - the fake login page log.php - the logger which will log the credentials as clear text into txt file avira.txt - credentials will be found here done.html - wi

A vulnerability in AirDroid application  which provides wireless management of your Android phone or tablet from any browser on the same Wi-Fi network allow hackers  to perform Dos attack from your Android device. Cross Site scripting or  XSS vulnerability in the browser version of AirDroid allows an attacker is able to send a malicious text message to the browser associated with the account when attacker is able to get access to a phone with AirDroid installed. According to advisory posted by US-Cert , When this message is viewed on the AirDroid web interface an attacker can conduct a cross-site scripting attack, which may be used to result in information leakage, privilege escalation, and/or denial of service on the host computer. Vulnerability is currently not patched and also AirDroid team didn't annouce any update regarding fix. As a general good security practice, only allow connections from trusted hosts and networks. Flaw registered as  CVE-2013-0134

Administration from Debian and Python project official websites confirmed that their WIKI servers were compromised by some unknown hackers recently. Hackers was able to hack because of several vulnerabilities in " moin " package. According to  Brian Curtin at Python Project , Hacker user some unknown remote code exploit on Python Wiki server (https://wiki.python.org/) and was able to get shell access. The shell was restricted to "moin" user permissions, where but no other services were affected. Attacker deleted all files owned by the "moin" user, including all instance data for both the Python and Jython wikis. Python Software Foundation encourages all wiki users to change their password on other sites if the same one is in use elsewhere. For now, Python Wiki is down and team is investigating more about breach. Where as in Debian Wiki (https://wiki.debian.org/) security breach, user use some known vulnerabilities Directory traversal ( CVE-20

Thamatam Deepak (Mr.47™) reported a Cross site scripting (XSS) Vulnerability and cookie handling in HTC website, that allow an attacker to HTC website hijack accounts. Mr. Deepak is a 16 years old whitehat hacker, listed in Apple Hall of Fame with 'The Hacker News' researcher Mohit Kumar this month. Cross-Site Scripting attacks are a type of injection problem, in which malicious scripts are injected into the otherwise benign and trusted web sites. The malicious script can access any cookies, session tokens, or other sensitive information retained by your browser. This vulnerability may be used by attackers to bypass access controls such as the same origin policy. Cross site scripting is very common web application vulnerability, Yesterday our security researcher, Christy Philip Mathew reported about multiple xss in official latest versions of cPanel and WHM . As reported by Whitehat hacker Deepak, there are multiple xss in HTC website, that allow an attacker

cPanel is a Unix based  fully featured popular web based hosting account control panel that helps webmasters to manage their domains through a web browser. The latest version of  cPanel & WHM is 11.34, which is  v ulnerable  to multiple cross site scripting. During my bug hunting process, today I ( Christy Philip Mathew )  discovered some serious XSS v ulnerabilities in  official cPanel, WHM. It also impact on the  latest version of software. This week, Rafay Baloch (Pakistani white hat hacker) also discovered another reflective cross site scripting vulnerability in  cPanel at manage.html . The interesting part would be the whole demonstration I done with the Official cPanel Demo located at https://cpanel.net/demo/ location, can be accessed via demo user & password provided by cPanel website itself i.e.  https://demo.cpanel.net:2086/login/?user=demo&pass=demo These  vulnerabilities actually affect the logged in users. Proof of Concept and screenshots are as shown below:

In November I was contacted for first time by the Egyptian Hacker named ViruS_HimA who announced me to have hacked into Adobe servers and leaked private data. The hacker violated Adobe servers gaining full access and dumping the entire database with more of 150,000 emails and hashed passwords of Adobe employees and customers/partner of the firm such as US Military, USAF, Google, Nasa DHL and many other companies. ViruS_HimA specifically addressed the inefficient and slow patch management process that leaves exposed for long period "big companies".  " When someone report vulnerability to them, It take 5-7 days for the notification that they've received your report!! It even takes 3-4 months to patch the vulnerabilities! Such big companies should really respond very fast and fix the security issues as fast as they can ." Like , we reported two days before that one month old reported critical vulnerability of account hijacking in Outlook and Hotmail  is still wo

This Friday I was working with my co-security researcher " Christy Philip Mathew " in +The Hacker News  Lab for testing the Cookie Handling Vulnerabilities in the most famous email services i.e Hotmail and Outlook. Well, both are merged now and part of the same parent company - Microsoft, the software giant.  Vulnerability allows an attacker to Hijack accounts in a very simple way, by just exporting & importing cookies of an user account from one system to attacker's system, and our results shows that even after logout by victim, the attacker is still able to reuse cookies at his end. There are different way of stealing cookies, that we will discuss below. In May 2012, another Indian security researcher Rishi Narang claimed similar vulnerability in Linkedin website. Vulnerability Details Many websites including Microsoft services uses cookies to store the session information in the user's web browser. Cookies are responsible for maintainin

Japan's National Police Agency has offered a monetary reward for a wanted hacker, use programming languages like C# to create a virus called " iesys.exe " and Hijack systems of innocent people to post aggressive messages on Internet on behalf of Users.  Method called a " Syberian Post Office " to post messages to popular Japanese bulletin board. Hacker use cross-site request forgery exploit, that allow hackers to making online postings via innocent users automatically. The messages included warnings of plans for mass killings at an elementary school posted to a city website. It is the first time that Japan's National Police Agency has offered a monetary reward for a wanted hacker  and will pay up to 3 million yen (US$36,000). The case is an embarrassing one for the police, in which earlier this year four individuals were wrongly arrested after their PCs were hacked and used to post  such messages on public bulletin boards. " Up until now th

Inj3ct0r Team found cross site scripting vulnerability in  4shared , a file sharing site. Vulnerability link is exposed in a note  available at their website.  In general, cross-site scripting refers to that hacking technique that leverages vulnerabilities in the code of a web application to allow an attacker to send malicious content from an end-user and collect some type of data from the victim. Also same hackers claiming to get access over a private server of NATO Library and expose the links online. Website titled " NATO Multimedia Library Online Catalog ". Inj3ct0r member told The Hacker News , " We found another secret NATO server. We received a root on the server and gave the world the hidden database to NATO personnel. Now everyone can look for a secret document ." These three servers are available online without authorization, but its not confirm that servers got hacked or not.

A particular class of attacks commonly referred to as "code insertion" and often " Cross-Site Scripting " has become increasingly popular. Yesterday we reported about Cross site scripting bug Paypal and Apple . Hacker from Inj3ct0r Team reported a XSS Cross site scripting Vulnerability on MSN.com website. Vulnerability exist of a subdomain of MSN at https://news.de.msn.com/. Details posted in an advisory . Cross site scripting occurs when a web application gathers malicious data from a user. Hackers said that, " The goal is to close the capabilities gap between the cyber-criminals and white hats, by enabling defenders to perform more comprehensive testing of their defenses ." According to report, this XSS is working perfectly with Internet Explorer and Opera web browser, Proof of Concept URL's are posted in advisory and Image as shown.

Bug Bounty program, where white hat hackers and researchers hunt for serious security vulnerabilities and disclosing them only to the vendor for a patch , In return vendors rewards them with money. Various famous websites like Facebook , Google , Paypal , Mozilla, Barracuda Networks and more other giving away bug bounties in thousands of Dollars to hackers for finding vulnerabilities. Most common vulnerabilities reported maximum time on various sites is Cross site scripting and each month hackers submit lots of such vulnerabilities to companies. In case  your report is duplicate, i.e. Someone else before you submit the same vulnerability - company will reject you from the bug bounty program. But there is no proof or an open Panel where hacker can verify that is someone already reported for same bug before or not. If company reply you - " The bug was already discovered by another researcher" , can you do anything  even after knowing that you are very first per