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A new whitepaper by Watchfire - HTTP Request Smuggling



Ory Segal wrote:

Hello,
Today, Watchfire released a new whitepaper, titled "HTTP Request Smuggling". The full paper can be found in the following link: http://www.watchfire.com/resources/HTTP-Request-Smuggling.pdf <BLOCKED::http://www.watchfire.com/resources/HTTP-Request-Smuggling.pdf>
The paper's abstract is copied below:

"We describe a new web entity attack technique – “HTTP Request Smuggling”. The attack technique and the derived attacks are relevant to most web environments and is the result of a HTTP server or device’s failure to properly handle malformed inbound HTTP requests. HTTP Request Smuggling works by taking advantage of the discrepancies in parsing when one or more HTTP devices/entities (e.g. Cache Server, Proxy Server, Web Application Firewall, etc.) are in the data flow between the user and the web server. HTTP Request Smuggling enables various attacks – web cache poisoning, session hijacking, cross-site scripting and most serious the ability to bypass web application firewall protection. HTTP Request Smuggling sends multiple specially-crafted HTTP requests that cause the two attacked entities to see two different sets of requests, allowing the hacker to smuggle a request to one device without the other device being aware of it. In the Web Cache poisoning attack, this smuggled request will trick the cache server into unintendedly associating a URL to another URL’s page (content), and caching this content for the URL. In the Web Application Firewall attack the smuggled request could be a worm (like Nimda or Code Red) or buffer overflow attack targeting the web server. Finally, because HTTP Request Smuggling enables the attacker to insert or sneak a request into the flow it allows the attacker to manipulate the web server’s request/response sequencing which can allow for credential hijacking and other malicious outcomes."
Thank you,
*Ory Segal
*/Director of Security Research/
Watchfire (Israel) LTD.
Tel: +972-9-9586077, Ext.236
Mobile: +972-54-7739359
e-mail: osegal <BLOCKED::mailto:osegal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> at watchfire.com