Proper configuration of the single elements that make up an application architecture is important in order to prevent mistakes that might compromise the security of the whole architecture.
Configuration review and testing is a critical task in creating and maintaining an architecture. This is because many different systems will be usually provided with generic configurations that might not be suited to the task they will perform on the specific site they're installed on.
While the typical web and application server installation will contain a lot of functionality (like application examples, documentation, test pages) what is not essential should be removed before deployment to avoid post-install exploitation.
Many web servers and application servers provide, in a default installation, sample applications and files that are provided for the benefit of the developer and in order to test that the server is working properly right after installation. However, many default web server applications have been later known to be vulnerable. This was the case, for example, for CVE-1999-0449 (Denial of Service in IIS when the Exair sample site had been installed), CAN-2002-1744 (Directory traversal vulnerability in CodeBrws.asp in Microsoft IIS 5.0), CAN-2002-1630 (Use of sendmail.jsp in Oracle 9iAS), or CAN-2003-1172 (Directory traversal in the view-source sample in Apache’s Cocoon).
CGI scanners include a detailed list of known files and directory samples that are provided by different web or application servers and might be a fast way to determine if these files are present. However, the only way to be really sure is to do a full review of the contents of the web server or application server and determine of whether they are related to the application itself or not.
It is very common, and even recommended, for programmers to include detailed comments on their source code in order to allow for other programmers to better understand why a given decision was taken in coding a given function. Programmers usually add comments when developing large web-based applications. However, comments included inline in HTML code might reveal internal information that should not be available to an attacker. Sometimes, even source code is commented out since a functionality is no longer required, but this comment is leaked out to the HTML pages returned to the users unintentionally.
Comment review should be done in order to determine if any information is being leaked through comments. This review can only be thoroughly done through an analysis of the web server static and dynamic content and through file searches. It can be useful to browse the site either in an automatic or guided fashion and store all the content retrieved. This retrieved content can then be searched in order to analyse any HTML comments available in the code.
The web server or application server configuration takes an important role in protecting the contents of the site and it must be carefully reviewed in order to spot common configuration mistakes. Obviously, the recommended configuration varies depending on the site policy, and the functionality that should be provided by the server software. In most cases, however, configuration guidelines (either provided by the software vendor or external parties) should be followed to determine if the server has been properly secured.
It is impossible to generically say how a server should be configured, however, some common guidelines should be taken into account:
Logging is an important asset of the security of an application architecture, since it can be used to detect flaws in applications (users constantly trying to retrieve a file that does not really exist) as well as sustained attacks from rogue users. Logs are typically properly generated by web and other server software. It is not common to find applications that properly log their actions to a log and, when they do, the main intention of the application logs is to produce debugging output that could be used by the programmer to analyze a particular error.
In both cases (server and application logs) several issues should be tested and analysed based on the log contents:
Sensitive information in logs
Some applications might, for example, use GET requests to forward form data which will be seen in the server logs. This means that server logs might contain sensitive information (such as usernames as passwords, or bank account details). This sensitive information can be misused by an attacker if they obtained the logs, for example, through administrative interfaces or known web server vulnerabilities or misconfiguration (like the well-known server-status misconfiguration in Apache-based HTTP servers ).
Event logs will often contain data that is useful to an attacker (information leakage) or can be used directly in exploits:
Also, in some jurisdictions, storing some sensitive information in log files, such as personal data, might oblige the enterprise to apply the data protection laws that they would apply to their back-end databases to log files too. And failure to do so, even unknowingly, might carry penalties under the data protection laws that apply.
A wider list of sensitive information is:
Typically servers will generate local logs of their actions and errors, consuming the disk of the system the server is running on. However, if the server is compromised its logs can be wiped out by the intruder to clean up all the traces of its attack and methods. If this were to happen the system administrator would have no knowledge of how the attack occurred or where the attack source was located. Actually, most attacker tool kits include a log zapper that is capable of cleaning up any logs that hold given information (like the IP address of the attacker) and are routinely used in attacker’s system-level root kits.
Consequently, it is wiser to keep logs in a separate location and not in the web server itself. This also makes it easier to aggregate logs from different sources that refer to the same application (such as those of a web server farm) and it also makes it easier to do log analysis (which can be CPU intensive) without affecting the server itself.
Logs can introduce a Denial of Service condition if they are not properly stored. Any attacker with sufficient resources could be able to produce a sufficient number of requests that would fill up the allocated space to log files, if they are not specifically prevented from doing so. However, if the server is not properly configured, the log files will be stored in the same disk partition as the one used for the operating system software or the application itself. This means that if the disk were to be filled up the operating system or the application might fail because it is unable to write on disk.
Typically in UNIX systems logs will be located in /var (although some server installations might reside in /opt or /usr/local) and it is important to make sure that the directories in which logs are stored are in a separate partition. In some cases, and in order to prevent the system logs from being affected, the log directory of the server software itself (such as /var/log/apache in the Apache web server) should be stored in a dedicated partition.
This is not to say that logs should be allowed to grow to fill up the file system they reside in. Growth of server logs should be monitored in order to detect this condition since it may be indicative of an attack.
Testing this condition is as easy, and as dangerous in production environments, as firing off a sufficient and sustained number of requests to see if these requests are logged and if there is a possibility to fill up the log partition through these requests. In some environments where QUERY_STRING parameters are also logged regardless of whether they are produced through GET or POST requests, big queries can be simulated that will fill up the logs faster since, typically, a single request will cause only a small amount of data to be logged, such as date and time, source IP address, URI request, and server result.
Most servers (but few custom applications) will rotate logs in order to prevent them from filling up the file system they reside on. The assumption when rotating logs is that the information in them is only necessary for a limited amount of time.
This feature should be tested in order to ensure that:
Some servers might rotate logs when they reach a given size. If this happens, it must be ensured that an attacker cannot force logs to rotate in order to hide his tracks.
Event log information should never be visible to end users. Even web administrators should not be able to see such logs since it breaks separation of duty controls. Ensure that any access control schema that is used to protect access to raw logs and any applications providing capabilities to view or search the logs is not linked with access control schemas for other application user roles. Neither should any log data be viewable by unauthenticated users.
Review of logs can be used for more than extraction of usage statistics of files in the web servers (which is typically what most log-based application will focus on), but also to determine if attacks take place at the web server.
In order to analyze web server attacks the error log files of the server need to be analyzed. Review should concentrate on:
Log statistics or analysis should not be generated, nor stored, in the same server that produces the logs. Otherwise, an attacker might, through a web server vulnerability or improper configuration, gain access to them and retrieve similar information as would be disclosed by log files themselves.
General
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