CAPEC-101

Detailed Abstraction Level
Meta — Very abstract, high-level category
Standard — Specific enough to understand
Detailed — Tied to specific technique Draft MITRE CAPEC Status
Stable — Fully reviewed and complete
Draft — Under development
Incomplete — Partially defined
Deprecated — No longer recommended
Obsolete — Replaced by another CAPEC Likelihood: High Severity: High
Server Side Include (SSI) Injection

Description

An attacker can use Server Side Include (SSI) Injection to send code to a web application that then gets executed by the web server. Doing so enables the attacker to achieve similar results to Cross Site Scripting, viz., arbitrary code execution and information disclosure, albeit on a more limited scale, since the SSI directives are nowhere near as powerful as a full-fledged scripting language. Nonetheless, the attacker can conveniently gain access to sensitive files, such as password files, and execute shell commands.

Prerequisites

A web server that supports server side includes and has them enabled

User controllable input that can carry include directives to the web server

Mitigations

Set the OPTIONS IncludesNOEXEC in the global access.conf file or local .htaccess (Apache) file to deny SSI execution in directories that do not need them

All user controllable input must be appropriately sanitized before use in the application. This includes omitting, or encoding, certain characters or strings that have the potential of being interpreted as part of an SSI directive

Server Side Includes must be enabled only if there is a strong business reason to do so. Every additional component enabled on the web server increases the attack surface as well as administrative overhead

Skills Required

[Medium] The attacker needs to be aware of SSI technology, determine the nature of injection and be able to craft input that results in the SSI directives being executed.