vulnerabilities-workflow-1.md

Vulnerability List

This document consolidates identified vulnerabilities in the application, combining information from multiple sources and removing duplicates.

1. Unrestricted Full-Text Search Information Disclosure

• Description:

  • The project exposes full-text search endpoints (both HTML and JSON) without any authentication or authorization checks.
  • An external attacker can easily submit an HTTP GET request (for example, to /watson/json/?q=test) and receive a JSON response containing search results.
  • Because django-watson is designed to index data from every model registered with it, if a developer registers any models that include sensitive or non-public data, an attacker might retrieve that data without needing to authenticate.
  • In short, the lack of access control on the search endpoints enables any remote user to trigger the search functionality and receive potentially sensitive details.

• Impact:

  • Information Disclosure: Sensitive or private data (if indexed) may be exposed to an unauthenticated attacker.
  • Data Enumeration: The attacker can learn about the underlying models and indexed fields, providing insight into the application’s internal data structure that may aid in further attacks.

• Vulnerability Rank: High

• Currently Implemented Mitigations:

  • No access control or filtering is implemented on the search endpoints. The views in /code/watson/views.py simply retrieve and return search data without verifying user credentials or permissions.

• Missing Mitigations:

  • Access Control: Implement authentication or authorization checks so that only permitted users can invoke the search endpoints.
  • Sensitive Data Filtering: Ensure that only data intended for public consumption is indexed (or redacted) before it is returned in search results.

• Preconditions:

  • The search endpoints (e.g. /watson/ and /watson/json/) are publicly accessible.
  • Models containing sensitive or confidential fields are registered with django-watson and are being indexed without any additional filtering or masking.

• Source Code Analysis:

  • In /code/watson/urls.py, the search functionality is exposed via two URL patterns:
    • re_path("^$", search, name="search")
    • re_path("^json/$", search_json, name="search_json")
  • In /code/watson/views.py, the SearchMixin.get_query() method reads the query parameter (named by default “q”) directly from the GET request without any authentication logic.
  • The SearchApiView.render_to_response() method then serializes the search results (which include fields like title, description, url, and meta) into JSON and returns them verbatim.
  • There is no code in these modules that checks whether the requestor is authorized to retrieve the displayed content.

  graph LR
      A[User sends GET request to /watson/json/?q=test] --> B(urls.py: maps /watson/json/ to search_json view);
      B --> C(views.py: search_json view / SearchMixin.get_query());
      C --> D{No Authentication/Authorization};
      D -- No Auth --> E(views.py: SearchApiView.render_to_response());
      E --> F[JSON Response with search results (including potentially sensitive data)];
      F --> G[User receives sensitive data];
      D -- Auth Required --> H[Access Denied];
      style D fill:#f9f,stroke:#333,stroke-width:2px
  

  Loading

• Security Test Case:

  • Step 1: From an external, unauthenticated machine (or using a tool such as curl or Postman), submit an HTTP GET request to the JSON search endpoint. For example:

    curl -X GET "https://<public-instance-domain>/watson/json/?q=test"

  • Step 2: Examine the HTTP response. Confirm that the response’s Content-Type header is set to application/json; charset=utf-8 and that the body contains a JSON object with a “results” array.
  • Step 3: Analyze the returned search results to determine whether they include any data from models that might be sensitive or not intended for public disclosure.
  • Step 4: Report that the absence of any access control has enabled the disclosure of potentially sensitive indexed data.

2. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) in Search Result Display

• Description:

  1. An attacker crafts a malicious payload, for example, a Javascript code snippet, and injects it into a field of a model instance that is registered with django-watson for search indexing. This could be achieved through various means depending on the application using django-watson, such as exploiting a separate vulnerability to modify database content or if the application allows user-generated content to be indexed without proper sanitization before indexing.
  2. The django-watson buildwatson management command or automatic index updates process this model instance, and the malicious payload is stored in the SearchEntry model's title, description, or content fields.
  3. A user performs a search query that results in the SearchEntry containing the malicious payload being included in the search results.
  4. The watson.templatetags.watson.search_result_item template tag is used to render the search results. This tag includes the potentially malicious search_result.title, search_result.description and search_result.url in the rendered HTML output, within the templates watson/includes/search_result_{app_label}_{model_name}.html, watson/includes/search_result_{app_label}.html, or watson/includes/search_result_item.html.
  5. If these templates do not properly escape the search_result.title and search_result.description when rendering them, the malicious Javascript code will be executed in the user's browser when the search results page is viewed.

• Impact: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability allows an attacker to execute arbitrary Javascript code in the context of a user's browser when they view search results. This can lead to various malicious activities, including:

  • Account hijacking (session stealing)
  • Defacement of the website
  • Redirection to malicious websites
  • Information disclosure (access to user's cookies, session tokens, and potentially sensitive data on the page)
  • Performing actions on behalf of the user

• Vulnerability Rank: High

• Currently Implemented Mitigations:

  • The project itself does not implement automatic sanitization of data before indexing. It relies on the application developer to ensure that data indexed by django-watson is safe.
  • The provided code does not contain explicit HTML escaping within the watson.templatetags.watson.search_result_item template tag or the included templates (watson/includes/search_result_item.html and others).

• Missing Mitigations:

  • Output escaping in templates: The search_result_item template tag and the included templates should use Django's template auto-escaping or explicitly use the escape filter to ensure that search_result.title and search_result.description are rendered safely and any HTML or Javascript code within them is escaped.
  • Input sanitization: While not a direct mitigation in django-watson itself, it's crucial for applications using django-watson to sanitize input data before it is stored in models that are indexed. This would prevent malicious payloads from ever reaching the search index. However, django-watson could provide documentation and recommendations on this best practice.

• Preconditions:

  • A model is registered with django-watson and its title and/or description fields are included in the search index.
  • An attacker is able to inject malicious content into the title or description fields of an instance of the registered model. This could be through a separate vulnerability in the application or by compromising the database directly.
  • The application uses the watson.templatetags.watson.search_result_item template tag to display search results without ensuring proper output escaping in the templates.

• Source Code Analysis:

  1. watson/templatetags/watson.py:

  @register.simple_tag(takes_context=True)
  def search_result_item(context, search_result):
      obj = search_result.object
      content_type = ContentType.objects.get_for_id(search_result.content_type_id)
  
      params = {
          "app_label": content_type.app_label,
          "model_name": content_type.model,
      }
      # Render the template.
      context.push()
      try:
          context.update({
              "obj": obj,
              "result": search_result,
              "query": context["query"],
          })
          return template.loader.render_to_string((
              "watson/includes/search_result_{app_label}_{model_name}.html".format(**params),
              "watson/includes/search_result_{app_label}.html".format(**params),
              "watson/includes/search_result_item.html",
          ), context.flatten())
      finally:
          context.pop()

  This tag is responsible for rendering search result items. It loads templates based on content type and falls back to watson/includes/search_result_item.html. It passes search_result to the template context.

  2. watson/includes/search_result_item.html (assuming default template if custom ones are not provided by the user):

  <li class="search-result-item">
      <h3><a href="{{ result.url }}">{{ result.title }}</a></h3>
      <p>{{ result.description }}</p>
  </li>

  In this default template, {{ result.title }} and {{ result.description }} are rendered directly without any explicit escaping. If Django's auto-escaping is not enabled for this block or globally disabled, or if the context processor settings do not ensure escaping, this will lead to XSS.

  graph LR
      A[Malicious Payload injected into model field] --> B(buildwatson command / index updates);
      B --> C[Malicious Payload in SearchEntry (title/description)];
      D[User performs search] --> E{Search Results include malicious SearchEntry};
      E --> F(watson.templatetags.watson.search_result_item);
      F --> G(watson/includes/search_result_item.html);
      G --> H{No Output Escaping for result.title/description};
      H -- No Escaping --> I[Malicious Javascript Execution in User's Browser (XSS)];
      H -- Output Escaping --> J[Safe HTML Rendered];
      style H fill:#f9f,stroke:#333,stroke-width:2px
  

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• Security Test Case:

  1. Setup:
     • Ensure a Django project is set up using django-watson.
     • Register WatsonTestModel1 with watson and include title and description in search fields.
     • Include watson.urls in your project's urls.py to enable search views.
     • Ensure that the default watson/includes/search_result_item.html template is used or a custom template that does not explicitly escape output is in place.
  2. Inject Malicious Payload:
     • Create a WatsonTestModel1 instance with a malicious Javascript payload in the title field:

     WatsonTestModel1.objects.create(
         title='<script>alert("XSS Vulnerability");</script>Malicious Title',
         description='Test Description',
         content='Test Content'
     )

     • Run python manage.py buildwatson to update the search index.
  3. Perform Search:
     • Access the search URL (e.g., /simple/?q=Malicious) in a web browser.
  4. Verify XSS:
     • Observe if an alert box with "XSS Vulnerability" appears when the search results page loads.
     • Inspect the HTML source of the search results page and confirm that the <script>alert("XSS Vulnerability");</script> payload is rendered directly within the <h3> tag in the HTML without being escaped.