On very rate occasions, my error log is showing the following error:
"You specified a Fuseaction of registrationaction#close which is not defined in Circuit public."
The full link is:"http://myUrl/index.cfm?do=public.registrationAction#close"
As you can see, the has merely points to an anchor (close) on the page.
This code is working 99% of the time, but on the odd occasion, Coldfusion / Fusebox throws this error out.
Why is this happening?
Could it be related to the device accessing my page somehow? Like a cell phone or Apple product that for some reason does handle hashes the way I am expecting it to?
Could it be javascript / JQuery being disabled?
Any guidance would be appreciated
Thanks
I used to see stuff like that. Older versions of Internet Explorer were not handling the hashtag properly when there were URL parameters. The best solution I could come up with was kludgey at best, but basically it forced the anchor tag to separate from the URL parameter.
http://myUrl/index.cfm?do=public.registrationAction&#close
I'm not sure there is a simple answer to this. We get odd exceptions all the time on our site for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes it's people not using the site the way you expect and sometimes it stuff like you mention such as user-agent edge cases etc.
Basically you need to start to gather evidence and see what comes up that's unusual with these requests.
So to start: do you catch exceptions in you application? If so dumping all scopes (CGI/CLIENT/FORM/URL/SESSION) in an email along with the full exception and emailing them to a custom emails address (such as errors#yourdomain.com) will give you a reference you can square up to your error times and this might give you a hint as to the real issue.
Hope that helps some!
Related
In the last days, Google Analytics is showing me some strange GET methods that have been requested on my website.
I have no clue if it is done by robots or humans or if it is some kind of attack or something harmless. They are coming from different countries, which for me is even more confusing because it seems like they are not only one person/robot.
Some examples of these urls are:
- /en/?lipi=urn:li:page:d_flagship3_feed;ipLRICUhTrGXGdPXnW0tnQ==
- /en/?lipi=urn:li:page:d_flagship3_feed;3kcVPzepRVGxY7MZjonjig==
- /en/?lipi=urn:li:page:d_flagship3_feed;mFWFR+VMS0SHqJTkYN87EA==
- /en/?_sm_pdc=1&_sm_rid=7MV6JrjR5MSrPHJMDDrtjMMQZVz6lqJrH02kZVk
Does anybody have an idea what that is?
I believe "_sm_pdc" and "_sm_rid" are added by the ZScalar Proxy (https://www.zscaler.com/) when it confirms with the user that they really wanted to visit your site.
I'm designing a REST API where, amongst others, there are two objects.
Journey
Report
For each Journey there are many Reports enroute, and each Report has exactly one associated Journey.
A user might create a Journey using the API as follows...
POST /journey/
Then retrieve the details...
GET /journey/1226/
The first question is, if a user wanted to post an Report to their Journey, which is the 'correct' URL structure that the API should impose? This seems intuitive to me...
POST /journey/1226/report/
...or is this the case...
POST /report/
...whereby in the latter, the Journey ID is passed in the request body somewhere?
The second question is, how might one go about implementing the first case in a tool such as the Django REST framework?
Thanks!
The URL/URI structure is almost completely irrelevant. It is nice to be able to read it, or easily change or even guess it, but that is it. There is no "requirement" official or unwritten how they should look like.
The point is however, that you supply the URIs to your clients in your responses. Each GET will get you a representation that contains links to the next "states" that your client can reach. This means the server has full control over URI structure, the client usually has to only know the "start" or "homepage" URI, and that's it.
Here is an article which discusses this question, has some good points: http://www.ben-morris.com/hackable-uris-may-look-nice-but-they-dont-have-much-to-do-with-rest-and-hateoas/
Pass for the second question :) I didn't use that particular framework.
I am currently trying to develop a web activity that a client would like to track via their Learning Management System. Their LMS uses the AICC standard (HACP binding), and they keep the actual learning objects on a separate content repository.
Right now I'm struggling with the types of communication between the LMS and the "course" given that they sit on two different servers. I'm able to retreive the sessionId and the aicc_url from the URL string when the course launches, and I can successfully post values to the aicc_url on the LMS.
The difficulty is that I can not read and parse the return response from the LMS (which is formatted as plain text). AICC stipulates that the course start with posting a "getParam" command to the aicc_url with the session id in order to retrieve information like completion status, bookmarking information from previous sessions, user ID information, etc, all of which I need.
I have tried three different approaches so far:
1 - I started with using jQuery (1.7) and AJAX, which is how I would typically go about a same-server implementation. This returned a "no transport" error on the XMLHttpRequest. After some forum reading, I tried making sure that the ajax call's crossdomain property was set to true, as well as a recommendation to insert $.support.cors = true above the ajax call, neither of which helped.
2 & 3 - I tried using an oldschool frameset with a form in a bottom frame which would submit and refresh with the returned text from the LMS and then reading that via javascript; and then a variation upon that using an iFrame as a target of an actual form with an onload handler to read and parse the contents. Both of these approaches worked in a same-server environment, but fail in the cross-domain environment.
I'm told that all the other courses running off the content repository bookmark as well as track completion, so obviously it is possible to read the return values from the LMS somehow; AICC is pitched frequently as working in cross-server scenarios, so I'm thinking there must be a frequently-used method to doing this in the AICC structure that I am overlooking. My forum searches so far haven't turned up anything that's gotten me much further, so if anyone has any experience in cross-domain AICC implementations I could certainly use recommendations!
The only idea I have left is to try setting up a PHP "relay" form on the same server as the course, and having the front-end page send values to that, and using the PHP to submit those to the LMS, and relay the return text from the LMS to the front-end iframe or ajax call so that it would be perceived as being within the same domain.... I'm not sure if there's a way to solve the issue without going server-side. It seems likely there must be a common solution to this within AICC.
Thanks in advance!
Edits and updates:
For anyone encountering similar problems, I found a few resources that may help explain the problem as well as some alternate solutions.
The first is specific to Plateau, a big player in the LMS industry that was acquired by Successfactors. It's some documentation that provide on setting up a proxy to handle cross-domain content:
http://content.plateausystems.com/ContentIntegration/content/support_files/Cross-domain_Proxlet_Installation.pdf
The second I found was a slide presentation from Successfactors that highlights the challenge of cross-domain content, and illustrates so back-end ideas for resolving it; including the use of reverse proxies. The relevant parts start around slide 21-22 (page 11 in the PDF).
http://www.successfactors.com/static/docs/successconnect/sf/successfactors-content-integration-turley.pdf
Hope that helps anyone else out there trying to resolve the same issues!
The answer in this post may lead you in the right direction:
Best Practice: Legitimate Cross-Site Scripting
I think you are on the right track with setting up a PHP "relay." I think this is similar to choice #1 in the answer from the other post and seems to make most sense with what you described in your question.
On my site, I want to allow users to add reference to images which are hosted anywhere on the internet. These images can then be seen by all users of my site. As far as I understand, this could open the risk of cross site scripting, as in the following scenario:
User A adds a link to a gif which he hosts on his own webserver. This webserver is configured in such a way, that it returns javascript instead of the image.
User B opens the page containg the image. Instead of seeing the image, javascript is executed.
My current security messures are currently such, that both on save and open, all content is encoded.
I am using asp.net(c#) on the server and a lot of jquery on the client to build ui elements, including the generation of image tags.
Is this fear of mine correct? Am I missing any other important security loopholes here? And most important of all, how do I prevent this attack? The only secure way I can think of right now, is to webrequest the image url on the server and check if it contains anything else than binary data...
Checking the file is indeed an image won't help. An attacker could return one thing when the server requests and another when a potential victim makes the same request.
Having said that, as long as you restrict the URL to only ever be printed inside the src attribute of an img tag, then you have a CSRF flaw, but not an XSS one.
Someone could for instance create an "image" URL along the lines of:
http://yoursite.com/admin/?action=create_user&un=bob&pw=alice
Or, more realistically but more annoyingly; http://yoursite.com/logout/
If all sensitive actions (logging out, editing profiles, creating posts, changing language/theme) have tokens, then an attack vector like this wouldn't give the user any benefit.
But going back to your question; unless there's some current browser bug I can't think of you won't have XSS. Oh, remember to ensure their image URL doesn't include odd characters. ie: an image URL of "><script>alert(1)</script><!-- may obviously have bad effects. I presumed you know to escape that.
Your approach to security is incorrect.
Don't approach the topic as "I have a user input, so how can I prevent XSS". Rather approach it like it this: "I have user input - it should be restrictive as possible - i.e. allowing nothing through". Then based on that allow only what's absolutely essential - plain-text strings thoroughly sanitized to prevent anything but a URL, and the specific, necessary characters for URLS only. Then Once it is sanitized I should only allow images. Testing for that is hard because it can be easily tricked. However, it should still be tested for. Then because you're using an input field you should make sure that everything from javascript scripts and escape characters, HTML, XML and SQL injections are all converted to plaintext and rendered harmless and useless. Consider your users as being both idiots and hackers - that they'll input everything incorrectly and try to hack something into your input space.
Aside from that you may run into som legal issues with regard to copyright. Copyrighted images generally may not be used on other people's sites without the copyright owner's consent and permission - usually obtained in writing (or email). So allowing users the opportunity to simply lift images from a site could run the risk of allowing them to take copyrighted material and reposting it on your site without permission which is illegal. Some sites are okay with citing the source, others require a fee to be paid, and others will sue you and bring your whole domain down for copyright infringement.
I'm using ASP.NET Web Forms for blog style comments.
Edit 1: This looks way more complicated then I first thought. How do you filter the src?
I would prefer to still use real html tags but if things get too complicated that way, I might go a custom route. I haven't done any XML yet, so do I need to learn more about that?
If IMG is the only thing you'd allow, I'd suggest you use a simple square-bracket syntax to allow it. This would eliminate the need for a parser and reduce a load of other dangerous edge cases with the parser as well. Say, something like:
Look at this! [http://a.b.c/m.jpg]
Which would get converted to
Look at this! <img src="http://a.b.c/m.jpg" />
You should filter the SRC address so that no malicious things get passed in the SRC part too. Like maybe
Look at this! [javascript:alert('pwned!')]
Use an XML parser to validate your input, and drop or encode all elements, and attributes, that you do not want to allow. In this case, delete or encode all tags except the <img> tag, and all attributes from that except src, alt and title.
If you end up going with a non-HTML format (which makes things easier b/c you can literally escape all HTML), use a standard syntax like markdown. The markdown image syntax is 
There are others also, like Textile. Its syntax for images is !imageurl!
#chakrit suggested using a custom syntax, e.g. bracketed URLs - This might very well be the best solution. You DEFINITELY dont want to start messing with parsing etc.
Just make sure you properly encode the entire comment (according to the context - see my answer on this here Will HTML Encoding prevent all kinds of XSS attacks?)
(btw I just discovered a good example of custom syntax right there... ;-) )
As also mentioned, restrict the file extension to jpg/gif/etc - even though this can be bypassed, and also restrict the protocol (e.g. http://).
Another issue to be considered besides XSS - is CSRF (http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross-Site_Request_Forgery). If you're not familiar with this security issue, it basically allows the attacker to force my browser to submit a valid authenticated request to your application, for instance to transfer money or to change my password. If this is hosted on your site, he can anonymously attack any vulnerable application - including yours. (Note that even if other applications are vulnerable, its not your fault they get attacked, but you still dont want to be the exploit host or the source of the attack...). As far as your own site goes, it's that much easier for the attacker to change the users password on your site, for instance.