January 2008 — News
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GWT: Advanced AJAX Security
Billy Hoffman gave a talk on advanced AJAX security at the recent Google Web Toolkit (GWT) conference in San Francisco. Hoffman manages HP Security Labs, which was SPIDynamics until HP acquired it this year, along with Hoffman. He focuses on automated discovery of Web application vulnerabilities and Web crawling technologies.
His research includes areas such as sampling, JavaScript static analysis (automatic analysis of source code), and cross-site scripting (XSS) -- code injection by malicious Web users into Web pages viewed by other users. However, he did note that XSS isn't required for AJAX hacking; there's much lower-hanging fruit.
In this talk, Hoffman demonstrated advanced attacks against AJAX applications, including manipulating client-side logic, defeating logic protection techniques, function hijacking (client-side code being changed), JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) hijacking and denial of service attacks. He discussed the susceptibility of GWT applications to these kinds of attacks and compared GWT security features to other AJAX frameworks, such as Prototype and Dojo. He ended by talking about hacking Google Gears, an open source browser extension that lets developers create Web applications that can run offline.
Hackers Love AJAX
According to Hoffman, AJAX is a hacker's dream come true. It offers an increased "attack surface," direct Application Programming Interface (API) access, vulnerability to reverse engineering, susceptibility to amplifying Web attacks and vulnerability to offline attacks. He said Microsoft is the worst at opening the door to hackers because nearly everything with Structured Query Language (SQL) statements is SQL-injectible, allowing direct access to the database server. Plus, he said, "much expert advice is blatantly wrong."
