XXE Injection in Spring Framework

Hello!

I'll give you additional information concerning advisory XML External Entity (XXE) Injection in Spring Framework (http://securityvulns.ru/docs29758.html).

Affected products:

• 3.0.0 to 3.2.3 (Spring OXM & Spring MVC)
• 4.0.0.M1 (Spring OXM)
• 4.0.0.M1-4.0.0.M2 (Spring MVC)
• Earlier unsupported versions may also be affected

Affected vendors:

Spring by Pivotal.

Details:

The Spring OXM wrapper doesn't disable external entity resolution when using the JAXB unmarshaller (SAXSource and StreamSource instances are vulnerable). Also Spring MVC processes user provided XML with JAXB in combination with a StAX XMLInputFactory without disabling external entity resolution.

Besides standard vectors of attacks with XXE Injection vulnerabilities (such as local file inclusion), which are usually mentioned in advisories, XXE Injection also allows to conduct attacks on other sites. And with using DAVOSET (DDoS attacks via other sites execution tool) it's possible to automate such attacks.

I wrote about such attacks in my 2012's article "Using XML External Entities (XXE) for attacks on other sites" (http://lists.webappsec.org/pipermail/websecurity_lists.webappsec.org/2012-August/008481.html) and 2013's "Using XXE vulnerabilities for attacks on other sites" (http://lists.webappsec.org/pipermail/websecurity_lists.webappsec.org/2013-August/008887.html).
As I described in my articles, XXE vulnerabilities can be used for conducting CSRF and DoS attacks on other sites (and at using multiple web
sites it's possible to conduct DDoS attacks). And my tool DAVOSET can be used for conducting such attacks via XXE vulnerabilities.

In October I released video demonstration of DAVOSET: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKi35-f346I

So all vulnerable web applications with affected versions of Spring Framework can be used for attacks on other sites via XXE Injection.

Best wishes & regards,
MustLive
Administrator of Websecurity web site
http://websecurity.com.ua