CWE-1385

Missing Origin Validation in WebSockets

Variant

Incomplete

Description

The product uses a WebSocket, but it does not properly verify that the source of data or communication is valid.

{"xhtml:p":["WebSockets provide a bi-directional low latency communication (near real-time) between a client and a server. WebSockets are different than HTTP in that the connections are long-lived, as the channel will remain open until the client or the server is ready to send the message, whereas in HTTP, once the response occurs (which typically happens immediately), the transaction completes. ","A WebSocket can leverage the existing HTTP protocol over ports 80 and 443, but it is not limited to HTTP. WebSockets can make cross-origin requests that are not restricted by browser-based protection mechanisms such as the Same Origin Policy (SOP) or Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS). Without explicit origin validation, this makes CSRF attacks more powerful."]}

Parent Weaknesses (ChildOf)

CWE-346: Origin Validation Error...

Common Consequences

Scope

Confidentiality

Integrity

Availability

Non-Repudiation

Access Control

Impact

Varies by Context, Gain Privileges or Assume Identity, Bypass Protection Mechanism, Read Application Data, Modify Application Data, DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart

Potential Mitigations

Implementation

Enable CORS-like access restrictions by verifying the 'Origin' header during the WebSocket handshake.

Implementation

Use a randomized CSRF token to verify requests.

Implementation

Use TLS to securely communicate using 'wss' (WebSocket Secure) instead of 'ws'.

Architecture and Design

Implementation

Require user authentication prior to the WebSocket connection being established. For example, the WS library in Node has a 'verifyClient' function.

Implementation

Leverage rate limiting to prevent against DoS. Use of the leaky bucket algorithm can help with this.

Implementation

Use a library that provides restriction of the payload size. For example, WS library for Node includes 'maxPayloadoption' that can be set.

Implementation

Treat data/input as untrusted in both directions and apply the same data/input sanitization as XSS, SQLi, etc.

CVE-2020-25095

web console for SIEM product does not check Origin header, allowing Cross Site WebSocket Hijacking (CSWH)

CVE-2018-6651

Chain: gaming client attempts to validate the Origin header, but only uses a substring, allowing Cross-Site WebSocket hijacking by forcing requests from an origin whose hostname is a substring of the valid origin.

CVE-2018-14730

WebSocket server does not check the origin of requests, allowing attackers to steal developer's code using a ws://127.0.0.1:3123/ connection.

CVE-2018-14731

WebSocket server does not check the origin of requests, allowing attackers to steal developer's code using a ws://127.0.0.1/ connection to a randomized port number.

CVE-2018-14732

WebSocket server does not check the origin of requests, allowing attackers to steal developer's code using a ws://127.0.0.1:8080/ connection.