Exploiting an unexploitable persistence DOM based XSS in feedly.com by using root domain cookies!

Summary

I found a persistence DOM based XSS vulnerability in feedly.com website. As it was not possible to exploit it directly without altering the cookies, I called it an unexploitable vulnerability! However, I could exploit it by using another XSS vulnerability which was in s3 subdomain of feedly.com website. This post explains what I have done to exploit this issue.

DOM based XSS in feedly.com:

First I found a DOM based XSS in feedly.com. As you can see in below picture the source is a cookie (feedlyVersion) and the sink is document.write(). 

Figure 1 - Picture of vulnerable code

Normally we can’t exploit this issue because it’s not possible to control the value of ‘feedlyVersion’ cookie and this is a less severe issue.

But in this type of vulnerability if attacker can control a cookie in a victim’s browser, then it can be assumed that exploitation is similar to other vectors where an attacker controls aspects of a user request, like a querystring value, or an HTTP POST name-value pair [1]. So the only way to exploit this DOM based XSS was adding a new cookie with the same name as ‘feedlyVersion’ and our payload.

Flash based XSS in s3.feedly.com:

Then I tried to find another XSS vulnerability in feedly.com sub-domains. Quickly I found a vulnerable version of JWplayer [2] http://s3.feedly.com/production/@@@/flash/player.swf in s3.feedly.com. 

Figure 2 - Flash based XSS in s3.feedly.com
Figure 3 - s3.feedly.com befor adding new cookie

Through this vulnerability in s3.feedly.com subdomain It was possible to add a new cookie for *.feedly.com. 

Chaining these issues:

To successfully exploit this issue our new feedlyVersion cookie should be in front of original feedlyVersion in cookie string. I used the trick which Egor Homakov introduced in his “Hacking Github with Webkit” blogpost [3].

A) Set a new cookie with feedlyVersion name and our payload for *.feedly.com:

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document.cookie="feedlyVersion='><script>prompt(document.domain)</script>;Domain=.feedly.com;Path=/;";

B) Moving our new feedlyVersion in front of the old one in cookie string:

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x1=window.open('http://feedly.com/');x1.close();

C) Redirecting user to http://feedly.com to execute our payload:

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location.href='http://feedly.com'

Finally putting all of them together:

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http://s3.feedly.com/production/@@@/flash/player.swf?debug=function(){document.cookie="feedlyVersion='><script>prompt(document.domain)</script>;Domain=.feedly.com;Path=/;";x1=window.open('http://feedly.com/');x1.close();location.href='http://feedly.com'}
Figure 4 - feedly.com before adding new feedlyVersion cookie
Figure 5 - s3.feedly.com after adding feedlyVersion cookie (by attacker)
Figure 6 - feedly.com after adding new feedlyVersion cookie
Figure 7 - Attacker controlled cookie delivered to the sink

PoC Video:

Disclosure Timeline:

  • April 8, 2013: Details of the vulnerabilities sent to Feedly.

  • April 8, 2013: Received reply, “Will take a look at them today”.

  • April 9, 2013: Received reply, “All issue have been fixed”.

Kudos to the Feedly team for fixing issues very quickly

References: