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By Date By Thread Potential Query Manipulation with Common Rails Practises From: Michael Koziarski <michael () koziarski com>

Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:51:36 +1300

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Common patterns used in Ruby on Rails applications could allow an attacker to generate SQL that, when combined with some database server's typecasting code, generates queries that match incorrect records. Note: This is a code and best-practise advisory, there is no patch to apply or updated version to install. Databases Affected: MySQL, SQLServer and some configurations of DB2 Not affected: SQLite, PostgreSQL, Oracle Outline - ------- When comparing two values of differing types most databases will either generate an error or return 'false'. Other databases will attempt to convert those values to a common type to enable comparison. For example in MySQL comparing a string with an integer will cast the string into an integer. Given that any string which isn't an invalid integer will convert to 0, this could allow an attacker to bypass certain queries. If your application has XML or JSON parameter parsing enabled, an attacker will be able to generate queries like this unless you take care to typecast your input values. For example: User.where(:login_token=>params[:token]).first Could be made to generate the query: SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE `login_token` = 0 LIMIT 1; Which will match the first value which doesn't contain a valid integer. This vulnerability affects multiple programming languages, and multiple databases, be sure to audit your other applications to see if they suffer the same issues. Work Arounds - ------------ There are two options to avoid these problems. The first is to disable JSON and XML parameter parsing. Depending on the version of rails you use you will have to place one of the following snippets in an application initializer Rails 3.2, 3.1 and 3.0: ActionDispatch::ParamsParser::DEFAULT_PARSERS.delete(Mime::XML) ActionDispatch::ParamsParser::DEFAULT_PARSERS.delete(Mime::JSON) Rails 2.3: ActionController::Base.param_parsers.delete(Mime::XML) ActionController::Base.param_parsers.delete(Mime::JSON) If your application relies on accepting these formats you will have to take care to explicitly convert parameters to their intended types. For example: User.where(:login_token=>params[:token].to_s) Fixes - ----- Unfortunately it is not possible for ActiveRecord to automatically protect against all instances of this attack due to the API we expose. For example: User.where("login_token = ? AND expires_at > ?", params[:token], Time.now) Without parsing the SQL fragments it is not possible to determine what type params[:token] should be cast to. Future releases of Rails will contain changes to mitigate the risk of this class of vulnerability, however as long as this feature is still supported this risk will remain. Credits - ------- Thanks to joernchen of Phenoelit for reporting this to us and to Jonathan Rudenberg for helping to review the advisory. - -- Cheers, Koz -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlES3ngACgkQ3CszDRD2lfNycACgljiq5sC41RM9RGw6qeoJGAqh PTsAniVkqWo07BXpKIQx9hEKMT1hA0Hy =3WN0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- By Date By Thread Current thread: Potential Query Manipulation with Common Rails Practises Michael Koziarski (Feb 06) Re: Potential Query Manipulation with Common Rails Practises Kurt Seifried (Feb 06)

Michael Koziarski (Feb 06)