Detections
Analytics

Blind XPath Injection (differential analysis)

high Web App Scanning Plugin ID 113310

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Synopsis

Blind XPath Injection (differential analysis)

Description

XML Path Language (XPath) queries are used by web applications for selecting nodes from XML documents. Once selected, the value of these nodes can then be used by the application.

A simple example for the use of XML documents is to store user information. As part of the authentication process, the application will perform an XPath query to confirm the login credentials and retrieve that user's information to use in the following request.

XPath injection occurs where untrusted data is used to build XPath queries.

Cyber-criminals may abuse this injection vulnerability to bypass authentication, query other user's information, or, if the XML document contains privileged user credentials, allow the cyber-criminal to escalate their privileges.

Scanner injected special XPath query characters into the page and based on the responses from the server, has determined that the page is vulnerable to XPath injection.

This injection was detected as scanner was able to inject specific XPath queries, that if vulnerable, result in the responses for each injection being different. This is known as a blind XPath injection vulnerability.

Solution

The preferred way to protect against XPath injection is to utilise parameterized (also known as prepared) XPath queries. When utilising this method of querying the XML document any value supplied by the client will be handled as a string rather than part of the XPath query.
An alternative to parameterized queries it to use precompiled XPath queries. Precompiled XPath queries are not generated dynamically and will therefor never process user supplied input as XPath.

See Also

http://projects.webappsec.org/w/page/13247005/XPath%20Injection

https://www.owasp.org/index.php/XPATH_Injection

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 113310

Type: remote

Family: Injection

Published: 8/8/2022

Updated: 2/21/2024

Scan Template: api, pci, scan

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 9

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:P/A:P

CVSS Score Source: Tenable

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 8.6

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:L

CVSS Score Source: Tenable

Reference Information