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Difference "Secure Programming with CppCMS" ver. 38 versus ver. 39

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## Introduction

Security is one of the major concerns in the development of web applications as they are instantly exposed to the general public where there are a lot of potential attackers.

Writing web applications today is very similar to walking

over a minefield. If you don't have proper tools and knowledge you are most likely going to loose a "virtual leg".

## State of Mind

There are several golden rules in writing secure web applications:

1. Never trust user input.

2. Think - "How can I attack my application"

3. Learn the common vulnerabilities and methods to prevent them.

So when you're writing web applications, always remember that there *is* somebody who would actually try

to do something bad to your site.

What is even more important is that at some point, you

_will_ make a mistake and your web site

may be cracked. Then you'll have to do the hard work

of restoring it. So keep backups and even more importantly

check your [restore procedures](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/12/14.html) work.

## SQL Injections

This is one of the most basic problems that

web developer should be familiar with.

Have you ever written code like:

std::string query=

"SELECT 1 from users "

"WHERE username='" + username +"' AND "

" password='" + password "';

mysql_query(conn,query.c_str());

...

What's the problem?

Assume that the password value is

' OR ''='

So the query would look like

SELECT 1 from users

WHERE username='user' AND

password='' OR ''=''

Which would always return 1...

So you get authenticated for knowing SQL `:-)` and not for

having a proper password

If you write code like this then you should not continue

web development until you've read this article:

[SQL Injection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_injection)

How do you prevent SQL injections?

Use prepared statements. [CppDB library](http://art-blog.no-ip.info/sql/cppdb/) provides all the tools you need.

Just rewrite the example above as

sql << "SELECT 1 FROM users "

"WHERE username=? AND password=?"

<< username << password;

Now the values of ? would be _properly_ substituted

with the correct values.

The query and values would be physically separated.

## Sessions

The HTTP protocol is stateless so in order to keep track of the users on our web site we store information in the session. For example:

session().set("username",username);

Now we can know who the user is. Now if we have

the `username` in the session we know what he can

do for example.

There are two ways to store the data in the session:

1. Store all the data server side, with a _unique_

session id in the client side cookie.

2. Store all the data in a client side cookie and

we ensure its validity by digitally signing it.

See: [CppCMS Configuration: session](http://art-blog.no-ip.info/wikipp/en/page/cppcms_1x_config#session)

This cookie content is very valuable information, as if an attacker gets this cookie he/she can impersonate another user.

### What to store in the session?

It's OK to store low value information like user name, user id, and maybe some properties that the user set themselves.

However there are several things you should not

keep in session: user permissions and rights.

Remember that each user can have more then one active

session. Consider you store his rights in the session,

now we want to drop his right and we can't as we don't

know which sessions belong to the user.

### Session handling is cookie based

In CppCMS session handing is cookie based and

only cookie based, so trust CppCMS and don't

reinvent your own methods.

There are many popular methods to store session

id that have design flaws. For example, consider

a popular method of keeping session id in the query string:

http://www.mybank.com/?sid=1234564435

Now publish a link `http://attackers_site.com/` on the

`www.mybank.com` web site. The innocent user

clicks on this link the attacker get user's session id

in the Referrer's HTTP header.

Now the attacker can go to `www.mybank.com` add `?sid=1234564435` to the URL and transfer all of the user's money to his account.

So don't reinvent the wheel, use CppCMS's session

mechanism that handles this safely for you.

### Client side storage considerations (Replay attack)

Client side storage is very useful as it allows you to

keep the user data client side without needing to keep track of file system, or use a database for session storage.

This is especially useful for high performance

applications.

However client side storage has one important

security problem - we have no way to invalidate it

by anything way other than a timeout.

Consider a situation where we're playing a game where

on each level we need to select one answer from four.

Now consider the user has made a mistake. He is not

pleased and he restores his previous cookie and goes back to the same level again - he 'winds back time'.

There is no way to reset his session to level 1 because

he can always go back in time.

So client side storage is a very powerful and useful tool, but you should be very careful when using it.

### Server side storage

When using server side storage on a file system,

it is a very good idea to change the default directory

that CppCMS stores sessions in `/tmp/cppcms_sessions`

to some other location so it would be harder to access this data in case of security exploits on maybe some other part of the program.

For example if the attacker gets the listing of this

directory he would know all session ids in the system.

### Hiding session data.

Sometimes it is useful to store some data in the

session in a way that the user does not know what it contains.

There is no problem when you are using server side storage,

however when you use client side storage you need

to encrypt the data.

CppCMS provides an option to use encryption such that

the data stored on the client side would be [automatically

encrypted](http://art-blog.no-ip.info/wikipp/en/page/cppcms_1x_config#session.client.cbc)

Use it if you don't want the user to see the data you

store in its session.

### Session expiration

There are two basic methods used for session expiration: fixed and renew. See [session.expire](http://art-blog.no-ip.info/wikipp/en/page/cppcms_1x_config#session.expire)

1. `fixed` - the session would expire in a fixed period of time from its creation. Use this for all critical parts. Because if the session is hijacked it would limit the amount

of time the attacker can spend on the web site.

2. `renew` - the session is automatically renewed on every visit. It is a very user friendly policy, but it allows you

to keep the session virtually forever.

Now when bad things happen and we want to invalidate

all existing sessions.

- Server side storage: just clear the directory that

keeps the sessions. By default it is `/tmp/cppcms_sessions/`

- Client side storage: change the secret key of the

the hmac signature.

### Session Fixation

This is a kind of attack that is used for impersonating

other users.

Consider example:

Consider an example:

1. Attacker goes to a bank side and receives a session id - special cookie.

1. Attacker goes to a bank site and receives a session id - special cookie.

2. Attacker injects this cookie to the innocent user using

some kind of XSS attack (see below).

3. User logs in into bank, because the had received the

cookie he already has the session id and this session id

receives some additional rights like to do operations

on the bank account.

4. Attacker goes to the bank site using the same cookie

3. User then logs into the bank, because he's received the

cookie he already has the session id and this session id then receives some additional rights like to operate on the bank account.

4. Attacker then goes to the bank site using the same cookie

stored in the user's browser and performs any kind

of operations user can do.

of operations the user can do.

How to prevent this?

cppcms::session_interface::reset_session();

By calling this function during the critical operations

like user log-in the session id would be replaced with

a new one:

if(authentication_ok()) {

session().reset_session();

session().set("user_id",id);

}

This simple operation would prevent session fixation attacks.

### Client side session private keys

In order to use client side session storage

you need to create a secret private keys for this

purpose.

They can be easily generated using `cppcms_make_key` tool.

Don't forget that these keys are top secret, if

attacker discovers them he would be able to escalate

his rights to any level and forge any session data.

## Cross Site Scripting (XSS)

[Cross Site Scripting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_scripting) in one of the most dangerous problems

web developers should deal with.

Most web application deal with content, sometimes it

may be very rich HTML content. Allowing user to

set his own HTML content as-is provides lots of

tool for attacking web site via injecting JavaScript

and for example storing uses session cookies,

and escalating user privileges to much higher ones,

defacing web sites and much more

Many dangerous things can be done even without

writing Java Script code but only using simple

CSS: [Clickjacking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickjacking), [defacement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website_defacement) and more.

So if you want to display a rich content you are

most likely need to apply some XSS filters to prevent

bad things.

### Do not allow HTML

First and most basic rule... Do not allow user to

write HTML content on the web site.

This is done by template system by default. Any value

that is displayed on the web site is escaped by default

such that HTTP attributes like `<` are

converted to the save values like `<`.

However you should notice two things:

1. This does not makes it safe if you,

for example write the value inside `href` attribute.

You should use `urlencode` filter (done automatically

with `<% url %>` url-mapper.

Consider:

<a href='/blog/post/<%= title %>'>

Now user creates a title

' onmouseover='alert(XSS)' '

And even after escaping he gets:

<a href='/blog/post/' onmouseover='alert(XSS)' >

Which allow code execution.

Using `<% url %>` tag or urlencode filter would solve the problem:

<a href='<% url "/post/" using tile %>'>

or

<a href='/blog/post/<%= title | urlencode %>'>

2. When you inject some content to the attributes,

always use double quotes `"` as they are escaped

by the default filter, while. the single quotes

are untouched.

This is correct code:

<img alt="<%= alternative %>" ... >

This one may lead to XSS:

<img alt='<%= alternative %>' ... >

If alternative is `text' onclick="alert(xss)" class='`.

would generate a code like:

<img alt='text' onclick="alert(xss)" class='' ...

2. The escape filter is applied only when no other

filters are used so if you use stuff like this:

<h1><%= title | to_title %></h1>

The content would not be escaped as one filter is already used. So you need to add `escape` filter explicitly

<h1><%= title | to_title | escape %></h1>

### XSS Filter

Sometimes we do need rich HTML content. In such cases

we must ensure that the generated HTML do not include

malicious code.

CppCMS provides XSS filters that allow to filter HTML

content using strict white-list rules.

Then can be found under [`cppcms::xss`](http://art-blog.no-ip.info/cppcms_ref_v0_99/namespacecppcms_1_1xss.html) namespace.

The filter uses a predefined set of rules that define

what HTML tags and attributes can be used.

The web developer should carefully select the tags

ones allow to use for content. Special care should be

given for url and style attributes.

Starting from CppCMS 0.99.10 it is possible to create

policy file using simple JSON format.

The policy can be loaded from file by simple calling:

cppcms::xss::rules rules(path_to_file);

And then content can be filtered as:

safe = cppcms::xss:filter(unsafe,rules);

It would validate the input and remove all tags and

properties that do not fit this policy.

For example, this JSON file defiles the simple rule that

can be used with basic TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor:

{

"encoding" : "UTF-8",

"entities" : [ "nbsp" ],

"tags" : {

"opening_and_closing" : [

"p",

"ul","ol","li",

"strong", "em",

"span",

"a"

],

"stand_alone" : [ "br" , "hr" ]

},

"attributes" : [

{

"tags" : [ "a" ],

"attributes" : [ "href" ],

"type" : "absolute_uri"

},

{

"tags" : [ "span" ],

"attributes" : [ "style" ],

"type" : "regex",

"expression" :

"(\\s*text-decoration\\s*:\\s*(underline|line-through)\\s*;)*"

}

]

}

Of course more complex input requires more complex rules. So

when you write such rules make sure:

1. You use only special `uri` attributes for URL tags like `href` or `src` - the primary candidate for Javascipt code injection.

2. Be very careful and strict with allowed CSS styles - best - do not allow them or use very strict set of

used styles. Remember CSS allows XSS injection as well using `url()` tags and is very "helpful" in creation of

click-jacking attacks.

### CSS Styles

CSS styles can be very dangerous. Best practice - do

not allow them at all!

The simplest example would be a click-jacking.

<a href="http://example.com/attack.html"

style="display: block; z-index: 100000;

opacity: 0.5; position: fixed;

top: 0px; left: 0;

width: 1000000px; height: 100000px;

background-color: red;"> </a>

Such style that does not include any URL or unsafe

JavaScript code allows to steal clicks for users.

So if you do allow CSS styles specify the exact

attributes that you allow as it is shown in the example

abive.

### Remember!

Vast majority of web attacks like session hijacking,

session fixation, privileges escalation, impersonating,

start with a simple XSS hole...

## Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)

### The attack

Is yet another dangerous and frequently used attack.

Consider a situation. On your web site you have a

simple web form, that allows for example to update some

content:

<form method="post" action="/update">

<input type="hidden" name="id" value="1434">

<textarea name="content">...</textarea>

<input type="submit" value="Update">

</form>

It is placed on www.mysite.com.

Now the controller code validates that the user

that perform this operation allows to do it (has

valid user in session with valid privileges)

Now the attacker creates a small form on his site

www.foe-cats.com that rates cute kittens and writes a

simple form:

<form method="post" action="http://mysite.com/update">

<input type="hidden" name="id" value="1434">

<input type="hidden" name="conent" value="My Site Sucks">

<input type="checkbox" ... > ...

<input type="submit" value="Rate Kittens">

</form>

The only task that remains for the attacker is to

make sure that somebody with correct rights

registered on the mysite.com would rate the

kittens.

Of course much more dangerous things could be done

this way.

### Prevention

There are many different ways to do this, like

never updating data on GET requests or

checking referrer had been proven to have some

security faults.

Currently the best known technique is to use

session specific secret token set withing the

form request.

In order to use CSRF prevention feature you need

to do two things:

1. Set [`security.csrf.enable`](/wikipp/en/page/cppcms_1x_config#security.csrf.enable) option to true, such that every session would have such token.

2. Add hidden token to every POST form using `<% csrf %>` tag.

For example:

<form action="/url" method="post"><% csrf %>

<% form as_p my_form %>

</form>

It would automatically inject the hidden input that would

include session specific CSRF token:

<input type="hidden" name="_csrf" value="df_d482">

And this token would be validated upon `cppcms::form::load`

call automatically.

This efficient and simple technique would prevent

CSRF attacks.

_Remember:_ it should be done for "POST" forms only as

"GET" forms may disclose the secret token in Referrer

header.

### Login CSRF

The CSRF protection depends on session validation, so in order to protect a form, a session must exists when the page is rendered (even for forms that have no other need for session values - like login forms.)

This opens an opportunity for Login CSRF attack.

Consider:

- Bob uses Alice's web site `www.alice.com`

- Eve creates an account on `www.alice.com`

- Eve creates a web site `www.eves-kittens.com` and creates a simple form for rating cute kittens:

<form action="http://www.alice.com/login" method="post" >

<input type="hidden" name="user" value="Eve" >

<input type="hidden" name="pass" value="xyz" >

<input type="submit" value="Cute!">

</form>

- Now Eve asks Bob to rate kittens and it does. Effectively logging himself in into `www.alice.com` on behave of Eve.

- Now every operation that Bob does on the `www.alice.com` web site is performed on behave of Eve and now Eve can for example spy on Bob. Or trick Bob to transfer money to himself effectively transferring them to Eve.

To protect the login method from Login CSRF attacks, the login() method should

look something similar to this (this application pattern should be applied

to all forms where a session isn't present upon the initial rendering of a

form):

void login()

{

login_content c;

if(request().request_method() == "POST" && session().is_set().("prelogin")) {

c.myform.load(context());

if(c.myform.validate() && correct_login(myform))) { // perform form validation and then user validation

session().reset_session();

session().erase("prelogin");

session().set("id",some_id_I_created); // or some other login id stored in the session

response().set_redirect_header("/some/path");

return;

}

session.set("prelogin","");

render("loginform",c);

}

This makes sure that the session is actually created

prior to logging in into the web site and thus the

CSRF token is created and checked.

## Random numbers generation

At some point you'll need to deal with random

numbers generation. And [this sample](http://xkcd.com/221/)

would be very good example how not to do things.

However even if you thing that the code like:

int getRandomNumber()

{

return rand();

}

Is better then your are wrong.

Built in C and C++ library pseudo-random number generators

are good for mathematical purposes but they are predictable.

If you want truly random numbers (as for generating some

UUIDs or generating some secret unguessable keys) use

`cppcms::urandom_device` that uses OS services for

generation of proper, cryptographically safe numbers

that can be used for these purposes.

## Character Set Considerations

One of the things that can be used for exploits is

messing up-with character set, providing invalid

character set.

There are many exploits that use invalid character

set to do bad things, for example XSS. This is

especially frequent with non-ASCII compatible

encodings like Shift-JIS.

So the recommendation is to use Unicode UTF-8 encoding

anywhere and validate the input.

CppCMS text widgets forms, JSON parser do this by default.

However if for some reason you prefer to use POST/GET

data directly like:

msg = request().post("message");

Do yourself a favor and validate or filter text encoding using even very simple:

msg = request().post("message");

msg = booster::locale::conv::utf_to_utf<char>(

msg,

booster::locale::conv::skip);

That would remove all invalid UTF-8 sequences.

## C and C++ Security

I put this section C++ secure programming the

last one mostly because most of C++ programmers

know about these issues forgetting that there

are lots of danger in web programming.

### General Notes

C++ language is considered unsafe - it does not provide

array boundary checks by default, uses pointer and many

other "dangerous stuff"

However unlike C, C++ is high level language that

provides abstraction for many things. So using

modern language techniques programming in C++ is

not more dangerous then programming in Java, Python or Ruby.

### Buffer Overflow

Is one of the classic problems:

sprintf(small_buff,"%d",huge_number);

strcpy(small_buffer,huge_string)

These are probably the classic examples of buffer

overflows...

However, in C++ you have `std::string` and `std::stringstream` and allow you to prevent using

these "dangerous" functions and write safer code.

You can use tools like `booster::locale::format` and

of course many tools that come with Boost libraries.

Use them and not "old-school" tools, they will

help you to write safe code and forget about

this problem.

### Dangling pointers

Consider situation:

foo *p=new foo();

...

delete p;

And accidentally on some later point.

p->bar();

The problem that there is some unknown data located

at the pointer. There are techniques can be used

to execute miscellaneous during access to dangling pointer.

The standard solution:

delete p;

p=0;

Is good but it should be done manually and so somebody

at some point will forget it.

How to deal with it right? Use smart pointers.

- `booster::shared_ptr` - smart reference counting pointer (or `std::shared_ptr` for C++0x compilers)

- `std::auto_ptr` or `std::unique_ptr` for C++0x compilers

- Other smart pointers with different copy policies in

booster namespace `hold_ptr`, `clone_ptr`, `copy_ptr` and

more.

They will solve you actually 3 problems not 1.

- Dangling pointers - they will reset them to 0 automatically.

- Memory leaks - manage memory automatically for you

- Make code exception safe such that, if the exception

is thrown between `new` and `delete` the object will

be properly destroyed by smart pointer.

### Integer overflows

Consider you are accepting from the user some number like

a size of data chunk he is going to send and then

add some data you add and ensure that it fits the

required limits:

unsigned user_data_size = // input from user

char *user_data = ...; // some input

unsigned my_data_size = sizeof(my_data);

char buffer[SOME_LIMIT];

if(user_data_size + sizeof(my_data) <= sizeof(buffer)) {

memcpy(buffer,some_data,user_data_size);

memcpy(buffer+user_data_size,

my_data,sizeof(my_data));

}

What is the problem? The code looks perfectly correct

but... lets set `user_data_size=0xFFFFFFFF` and lets

assume that `sizeof(my_data)` is 4 then `user_data_size+sizeof(my_data)` would be 3 and deferentially

smaller then `sizeof(buffer)` but the next `memcpy`

would cause severe buffer overflow...

How to prevent it? Always put the user supplied

data on its own the comparison side.

if(user_data_size <= sizeof(buffer)-sizeof(my_data)) {

...

}

Note signess of the numbers compare signed with signed

and unsigned with unsigned.

## What happens if we still fail?

Even if we take all precautions, we still, sooner

or later will fail.

The question is how to minimize the possible damage.

### After Failure

The most important thing you should care about is backups.

You need to do _backups_ of the software, data

files and of course the data base.

But what is even more important is to check that

you can restore your web site easily from the last

backup. So make regular checks that your restore procedures

work properly. So on the day the bad thing happens you

will be prepared.

It is important to keep logs - logs from your web

server your application logs. In any case of suspicious

operation... Report it to the log. It would be

very helpful to understand what happened.

If the application crashes in production environment

it is very hard to understand what exactly happened.

So when you deploy the application compile it with

debug information. Use CMake's flag `-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo` or just use GCC's

flags `-O2 -g`. Enable core dumps - if the program

crashes you'll be able to open it with debugger

and see what exactly had happened.

### Running as limited user

As we all know bugs happen and software crashes and

crash may give an attacker an opportunity to execute

his own code.

So it is very good idea to run CppCMS under limited user.

If you use a web server to control CppCMS's process life

time for you, then most likely your process will run

under underprivileged user, however if you use

your own service don't forget these two configuration

sections:

- [daemon](/wikipp/en/page/cppcms_1x_config#daemon) - for Unix daemon

- [winservice](/wikipp/en/page/cppcms_1x_config#winservice) - for Windows service.

Create a limited user that can do almost anything and run

the process under it. This way even if attacker succeeds

to execute some code he will not be able to do too much.

CppCMS's daemon allows to provide a `chroot` jail for

the process significantly limiting the parts of the

file system the process can access. The [daemon.chroot](/wikipp/en/page/cppcms_1x_config#daemon.chroot) option

would make it much harder to exploit the security holes

in the application.

## Links

- [Ruby On Rails Security Guide](http://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html) - very good security programming guide.

- [Open Web Application Security Project](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page)

- [XSS Cheat Sheet](http://ha.ckers.org/xss.html) - a wide set of examples of XSS attacks

CppCMS - C++ Web Framework.

Difference "Secure Programming with CppCMS" ver. 38 versus ver. 39

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