Project #4, Web Security

Due: Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014, 23:59.

For clarifications and hints, see the FAQ, originally developed for Stanford CS 155.

How to set up the environment

For this project, as in previous projects, you are going to use a VirtualBox virtual machine.

Setting up Boxes on your own machine: Download the BoxesX virtual machine image, BoxesX.ova. Note that this is not the same VM image as the one in previous projects, so you should not use those VMs. The ova file should load into VirtualBox. Once the BoxesX VM is running, you will want to start X and run the Iceweasel browser, as described below.

How to run iceweasel

The Web server serving the Zoobar site you will be attacking is hosted inside the VM. (If you try to connect to zoobar.org outside the VM, you will get Stanford’s site, which you should not try to interact with.) Furthermore, the Web browser you’ll use to develop and test your attacks is also hosted inside the VM. It is called Iceweasel.

Iceweasel is the Debian version of Firefox—essentially the same browser, but with a different name because of licensing issues. To start iceweasel in BoxesX, log in as user, and do the following:

  1. Type the startx command. This will start the X Windowing System, and a new window will be displayed with a xterm (shell) where you can enter commands. (Click the mouse to place the window.)
  2. Type iceweasel & within the newly displayed xterm. This will open the Iceweasel browser. (Again, click the mouse to place the window.)
  3. In the URL bar, you can type http://zoobar.org/ to connect to the Zoobar site.

Setting up port forwarding

The easiest way to access your VM from the host computer is with SSH. VirtualBox’s networking rules do not by default allow incoming connections to the VM, but you can set up a port forwarding rule, as follows. In the settings window for the BoxesX VM, choose the “Network” tab, then show the “Advanced” options, and click the “Port Forwarding” button to bring up the port forwarding rules dialog.

In this dialog, you should see a rule binding port 8024 of localhost (127.0.0.1) on the host to port 22 on the VM. If this rule is not present, or if you would like to use a different port on the host, you can change the configuration and click OK.

With port forwarding enabled, you can SSH into your VM using a command like “ssh user@localhost -p 8024”.

Note that if you also used port forwarding on port 8024 for a previous project, SSH will get very upset, because the new VM’s key is different and SSH suspects a man-in-the-middle attack. It will tell you what line in ~/.ssh/known_hosts is responsible, and you can delete this line and try again.

Backing up your work

As with any project, you will want to make and keep frequent backups of your work. If you are developing your code in user’ home directory inside the VM, then an easy way to back this directory up is with the rsync command.

Suppose you have set up port forwarding so that port 8024 on the host forwards to port 22 on the VM. And suppose you’d like to back up into a directory called bkp123 in your home directory. Run the following command on the host:

rsync -av -e "ssh -p 8024" user@localhost:/home/user/ ~/bkp123/

If you run this command again later it will update the contents of bkp123 to match the contents of user’s home directory.

To restore from backup, run the following command, again from the host:

rsync -av -e "ssh -p 8024" ~/bkp123/ user@localhost:/home/user/

Project Overview

The fictional “Zoobar Foundation” has set up a simple Web application at zoobar.org (inside the BoxesX VM), allowing registered users to post profiles and transfer “zoobar” credits between each other. Each registered user starts with 10 zoobars.

You will craft a series of attacks on zoobar.org that exploit vulnerabilities in the Website’s design. Each attack presents a distinct scenario with unique goals and constraints, although in some cases you may be able to reuse parts of your code.

Although many real-world attackers do not have the source code for the Websites they are attacking, you are one of the lucky ones: you can find the source code under /var/zoobar/www in the BoxesX VM.

The zoobar server is actually run locally on each of your boxes. We will run your attacks after wiping clean our own local database of registered users (except the user named "attacker"). Of course this means that any data you have added while working on the assignment will not be present during grading.

Setup

Browser: We will grade your project within the BoxesX VM, using the Iceweasel browser. which is installed in the Boxes. Therefore, you should test your code in the boxes on this browser. Iceweasel is essentially the same browser as Firefox, but under different branding. Anything that works in iceweasel will likely work in (the same version of) Firefox as well.

There are subtle quirks in the way HTML and JavaScript are handled by different browsers, and some attacks that work in Internet Explorer (for example) may not work in Firefox (and therefore in Iceweasel). In particular, you should use the Mozilla way of adding listeners to events.

Email script. For Attacks A and D, you will need a server-side script to automatically email information captured by your client-side JavaScript to your user account within the Boxes. We have provided this script for you. Please review the instructions at http://zoomail.org/sendmail.php (open this url from within the Boxes VM) and use that URL in your attack scripts to send emails. Again, this server is also being run locally on your own boxes machine. To check your local email use the mutt email client (type mutt in the shell to start the client, and follow the instructions).


Attack A. Cookie Theft

Attack B. Cross-Site Request Forgery

Attack C. SQL Injection


Attack D. Password Theft

Attack E. Profile Worm


Deliverables

Create files named a.txt, b.html, c.html, d.html, and e.txt, containing each of your five attacks. You must also include a separate README file containing your names and descriptions of how each attack works.

The last two attacks are harder than the first three. We encourage you to start early!

Grading

Each attack is worth up to 4 points. The entire project will be graded out of 20.

Beware of Race Conditions: Depending on how you write your code, all five of these attacks could potentially have race conditions that affect the success of your attacks. Attacks that fail on the grader’s browser during grading will receive less than full credit. To ensure that you receive full credit, you should wait after making an outbound network request rather than assuming that the request will be sent immediately.

Thanks

This is Project 2 from Stanford’s CS 155, Computer and Network Security. Thanks to Dan Boneh, John Mitchell, Collin Jackson, and the 155 TAs.