| Name |
Using UTF-8 Encoding to Bypass Validation Logic |
|
| Likelyhood of attack |
Typical severity |
| High |
High |
|
| Summary |
This attack is a specific variation on leveraging alternate encodings to bypass validation logic. This attack leverages the possibility to encode potentially harmful input in UTF-8 and submit it to applications not expecting or effective at validating this encoding standard making input filtering difficult. UTF-8 (8-bit UCS/Unicode Transformation Format) is a variable-length character encoding for Unicode. Legal UTF-8 characters are one to four bytes long. However, early version of the UTF-8 specification got some entries wrong (in some cases it permitted overlong characters). UTF-8 encoders are supposed to use the "shortest possible" encoding, but naive decoders may accept encodings that are longer than necessary. According to the RFC 3629, a particularly subtle form of this attack can be carried out against a parser which performs security-critical validity checks against the UTF-8 encoded form of its input, but interprets certain illegal octet sequences as characters. |
| Prerequisites |
The application's UTF-8 decoder accepts and interprets illegal UTF-8 characters or non-shortest format of UTF-8 encoding. Input filtering and validating is not done properly leaving the door open to harmful characters for the target host. |
| Execution Flow |
| Step |
Phase |
Description |
Techniques |
| 1 |
Explore |
[Survey the application for user-controllable inputs] Using a browser or an automated tool, an attacker follows all public links and actions on a web site. They record all the links, the forms, the resources accessed and all other potential entry-points for the web application. |
- Use a spidering tool to follow and record all links and analyze the web pages to find entry points. Make special note of any links that include parameters in the URL.
- Use a proxy tool to record all user input entry points visited during a manual traversal of the web application.
- Use a browser to manually explore the website and analyze how it is constructed. Many browsers' plugins are available to facilitate the analysis or automate the discovery.
|
| 2 |
Experiment |
[Probe entry points to locate vulnerabilities] The attacker uses the entry points gathered in the "Explore" phase as a target list and injects various UTF-8 encoded payloads to determine if an entry point actually represents a vulnerability with insufficient validation logic and to characterize the extent to which the vulnerability can be exploited. |
- Try to use UTF-8 encoding of content in Scripts in order to bypass validation routines.
- Try to use UTF-8 encoding of content in HTML in order to bypass validation routines.
- Try to use UTF-8 encoding of content in CSS in order to bypass validation routines.
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| Solutions | The Unicode Consortium recognized multiple representations to be a problem and has revised the Unicode Standard to make multiple representations of the same code point with UTF-8 illegal. The UTF-8 Corrigendum lists the newly restricted UTF-8 range (See references). Many current applications may not have been revised to follow this rule. Verify that your application conform to the latest UTF-8 encoding specification. Pay extra attention to the filtering of illegal characters. Another consideration is error recovery. To guarantee correct recovery after corrupt or lost bytes, decoders must be able to recognize the difference between lead and trail bytes, rather than just assuming that bytes will be of the type allowed in their position. For security reasons, a UTF-8 decoder must not accept UTF-8 sequences that are longer than necessary to encode a character. If you use a parser to decode the UTF-8 encoding, make sure that parser filter the invalid UTF-8 characters (invalid forms or overlong forms). Look for overlong UTF-8 sequences starting with malicious pattern. You can also use a UTF-8 decoder stress test to test your UTF-8 parser (See Markus Kuhn's UTF-8 and Unicode FAQ in reference section) Assume all input is malicious. Create an allowlist that defines all valid input to the software system based on the requirements specifications. Input that does not match against the allowlist should not be permitted to enter into the system. Test your decoding process against malicious input. |
| Related Weaknesses |
|
CWE ID
|
Description
|
| CWE-20 |
Improper Input Validation |
| CWE-21 |
|
| CWE-73 |
External Control of File Name or Path |
| CWE-74 |
Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component ('Injection') |
| CWE-171 |
|
| CWE-172 |
Encoding Error |
| CWE-173 |
Improper Handling of Alternate Encoding |
| CWE-180 |
Incorrect Behavior Order: Validate Before Canonicalize |
| CWE-181 |
Incorrect Behavior Order: Validate Before Filter |
| CWE-692 |
Incomplete Denylist to Cross-Site Scripting |
| CWE-697 |
Incorrect Comparison |
|
| Related CAPECS |
|
CAPEC ID
|
Description
|
| CAPEC-64 |
This attack targets the encoding of the URL combined with the encoding of the slash characters. An attacker can take advantage of the multiple ways of encoding a URL and abuse the interpretation of the URL. A URL may contain special character that need special syntax handling in order to be interpreted. Special characters are represented using a percentage character followed by two digits representing the octet code of the original character (%HEX-CODE). For instance US-ASCII space character would be represented with %20. This is often referred as escaped ending or percent-encoding. Since the server decodes the URL from the requests, it may restrict the access to some URL paths by validating and filtering out the URL requests it received. An attacker will try to craft an URL with a sequence of special characters which once interpreted by the server will be equivalent to a forbidden URL. It can be difficult to protect against this attack since the URL can contain other format of encoding such as UTF-8 encoding, Unicode-encoding, etc. |
| CAPEC-71 |
An attacker may provide a Unicode string to a system component that is not Unicode aware and use that to circumvent the filter or cause the classifying mechanism to fail to properly understanding the request. That may allow the attacker to slip malicious data past the content filter and/or possibly cause the application to route the request incorrectly. |
| CAPEC-267 |
An adversary leverages the possibility to encode potentially harmful input or content used by applications such that the applications are ineffective at validating this encoding standard. |
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