Category Archives: databases

Malware prevention of data received in a POST endpoint

Posted on by

Problem

Having one HTTPS api which has an endpoint i.e POST data how can we prevent/check that the data received is not malicious or possibly detrimental?

To consider (please read)

  • POST data receives 2 payload parameters: key and data. Where key could be any valid string (even allows extension malicious.bat and data a string or multipart/form-data.
  • GET data will return the data into a downloadable file where the file name is the key parameter and sets the Content-Type to application/octet-stream.
  • This allows a client, to post stuff like: key: danger.bat data: !#/bin/bat\ndb_destroy;' and when retrived, a file on name danger.bat` is downloadable.
  • In the current implementation (for whatever X reason) I can only implement a new endpoint of POST data from 0 in order to don’t destroy current api-clients, so in that part I am quite free but let’s say, can’t do much on the GET data.
  • A virus scan is out of question, due to high volume of this API.
  • It’s clear that (unless someone knows), there is no guarantee to secure the API, we need here to find instead the Best prevention and solution in a Best Effort

Question

  • Best way and how to validate data a scan for possible Malware/virus/XSS(cross-site scripting)/ and other possible malicious content sent via HTTP through an API by client.

  • What are the possible dangers on letting a client create/read any type of strings into a database without check what’s the content?

Scenario

With an API a client can connect to endpoint /postdata and currently accepts any Content-Type. The data can be inserted in a form-data or urlencoded base64, anytype of string or bytes. Once the the request is received in the database, there is not check, the data is only converted from a string into base64 bytes and then inserted into a database as bytes databytes, more specifically in a Cochbase database. The user also specify the name of its data with a name.

In another endpoint called /getDatathe client can retrieve that data.
So a sending client can send stuff like (as strings):

  • Html file with possible Javascript scripts in it:
    • Name: virus.html
    • Data: <!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><head></head><body><script>alert("Virus!!!!")</script></body></html>
  • Shell scripts
    • Name: virus.bat
    • Data: #!/bin/bash echo "Virus";
  • Images
    • Symply converted into base64 if as parameter of a URL or as field in a form-data ( multipart/form-data)
  • Executables as bytes.
  • Shell scripts

Also worth pointing out that once this data is in the database, is not proccessed or used, but only released to the client when it requests it via the /getData endpoint.

The challange I’m facing is that currently, there is not checking on the string sent by client, so it could technically send malicious data, however, how can you check a string with all the different possible dangers?

Example

schroeder Actually in the comment made a good example:

how is the risk different from hosting an html file on OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.?

Now, this back-end service that I’m facing this challange is not like the above mentioned apps, however, a similar use case would be with Google Drive and you are the security developer

  • user_a put in his drive: virus.html and shares it for the web.
  • user_b click on the virus.html on the link, downloads it no problem and is pc blows up, or whatever malicious thing the virus.html was meant for

Where is the risk?

I can see 2

  1. How would you implement a possible (if any) check for user_a when it uploads virus.html? Can you prevent it somehow?
  2. How would you implement a possible (if any) check for user_b when it download virus.html?

What’s the risk?

For example, someone can send data in a form of html (like above example) and also set it’s name as a html file with file extension.
If then you request that data, the file is downloaded.

Structure

Related

I’ve already read and went through these related post, however, they are more specific to file and when adding a file into a folder. However in this case we are adding a file as array of bytes into a database and later retrieved.

Continue reading Malware prevention of data received in a POST endpoint→

How to design a desktop application that has access to a database via LAN?

Posted on by

As part of a project for school I’ve been tasked with designing a secure application that should be able to upload and download files from a database. I have very little experience in the area of security so I’m unsure of where to start so… Continue reading How to design a desktop application that has access to a database via LAN?→