CVE-2017-1000481

When you visit a page where you need to login, Plone 2.5-5.1rc1 sends you to the login form with a came_from parameter set to the previous url. After you login, you get redirected to the page you tried to view before. An attacker might try to abuse this by letting you click on a specially crafted link. You would login, and get redirected to the site of the attacker, letting you think that you are still on the original Plone site. Or some javascript of the attacker could be executed. Most of these types of attacks are already blocked by Plone, using the isURLInPortal check to make sure we only redirect to a page on the same Plone site. But a few more ways of tricking Plone into accepting a malicious link were discovered, and fixed with this hotfix.

Weakness

A web application accepts a user-controlled input that specifies a link to an external site, and uses that link in a Redirect. This simplifies phishing attacks.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Assume all input is malicious. Use an “accept known good” input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does.
• When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, “boat” may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as “red” or “blue.”
• Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code’s environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright.
• Use a list of approved URLs or domains to be used for redirection.
• When the set of acceptable objects, such as filenames or URLs, is limited or known, create a mapping from a set of fixed input values (such as numeric IDs) to the actual filenames or URLs, and reject all other inputs.
• For example, ID 1 could map to “/login.asp” and ID 2 could map to “http://www.example.com/". Features such as the ESAPI AccessReferenceMap [REF-45] provide this capability.
• Understand all the potential areas where untrusted inputs can enter your software: parameters or arguments, cookies, anything read from the network, environment variables, reverse DNS lookups, query results, request headers, URL components, e-mail, files, filenames, databases, and any external systems that provide data to the application. Remember that such inputs may be obtained indirectly through API calls.
• Many open redirect problems occur because the programmer assumed that certain inputs could not be modified, such as cookies and hidden form fields.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/178.html

References

• https://plone.org/security/hotfix/20171128/open-redirection-on-login-form