This warning does not refer to this particular site (Acunetix.com) but to quite a few websites out there. This is a notice that will show up when a Google search lists websites that are flagged as dangerous. Google’s search engine works together with StopBadware.org to…
A quick security analysis of Facebook’s Album Privacy
Most social networking sites have privacy options which allow users to share photo albums with selected people or groups. Such features encourage end users to upload possibly compromising photos, for example photos of last night’s party. The idea is that it is acceptable to share…
Drupal Local File Inclusion Vulnerability
I was testing our scanner (with AcuSensor enabled) on Drupal (http://www.drupal.org) and the scanner found a possible File Inclusion vulnerability. As you can see from the screenshot above, the GET variable q was set to start/../../xxx….end and it got partially sanitized. It reached the include…
AcuSensor and the pink blog
While testing our AcuSensor technology, I downloaded a small PHP blog application from the internet. The installation went smoothly. This particular application was not using a database but it was storing everything in text files. I added a sample blog post and I was ready…
How can low privilege bugs lead to a server compromise?
To address a large number of security concerns, it is often recommended that web applications make effective use of “the principle of least privilege“. The idea is that one should only grant the privileges on the basis that they are needed. In a previous post,…
SQL injection sneaks into Kaspersky’s support website
The recent compromise of Kaspersky’s support database left the company with a bit of explaining to do. The hacker published a blog post on hackersblog detailing stunts with Kaspersky’s USA support website. Kaspersky also published their own account based on their log files and the hacker’s (nicknamed unu) blog post. The following is a summary of what happened and how such attacks can be prevented.
The hidden dangers of XSLTProcessor – Remote XSL injection
Today I’m going to talk about a new vulnerability which I named Remote XSL Injection. I didn’t find any references on the internet about this vulnerability, which I found while auditing some PHP code for a friend. PHP supports XSL transformations using the XSLTProcessor class….
Embedded devices can be hacked through the web interface
Anyone who has tested even a small number of web configuration interfaces on embedded devices, such as managed routers, VoIP gateways and wireless routers, knows that these devices are notorious for web application vulnerabilities. It is not uncommon for these devices to be vulnerable to…
Image upload forms used to hijack websites
In the past days I came across a stimulating blog post titled “Dissecting a Multistage Web Attack that uses the recent IE7 0day”. The authors described how a vulnerable web application was then able to infect web browsers visiting the infected website. The attackers, who…