Security Exploit in browser extensions for Adblock, Adblock Plus, and uBlock

eva2000 · Apr 17, 2019

Ouch, an exploit in browser extensions for Adblock, Adblock Plus, and uBlock may permit attackers to remotely inject arbitrary code into web pages

Adblock Plus filters can be abused to execute malicious code in browsing sessions | ZDNet

An exploit has been uncovered in the filter systems of Adblock, Adblock Plus, and uBlock which may permit attackers to remotely inject arbitrary code into web pages.

Security researcher Armin Sebastian said in a blog post on Monday that the issue lies within version 3.2 of the Adblock Plus software which introduced a new filter option for rewriting requests in 2018.

This feature, also adopted by AdBlock and uBlock, is vulnerable to a security flaw deemed "trivial" to exploit by Sebastian, and the issue could potentially be leveraged in attacks including the theft of online credentials, session tampering, or page redirection.

According to the researcher, as the impacted extensions account for over 100 million monthly active users, the security flaw may have a massive impact if exploited in the wild by a malicious filter author.

"The feature is trivial to exploit in order to attack any sufficiently complex web service, including Google services, while attacks are difficult to detect and are deployable in all major browsers," Sebastian says.

Filter lists are core components of ad blocking software as they provide a repository of URLs which are considered to be suspicious, malicious, or related to advertising. When an ad blocker is installed on a browser, while users are surfing the web, the software accesses these lists and prevents such content from loading.

The problem lies in the $rewrite filter option, a feature introduced last year. $rewrite is used by some ad blockers to block circumvention attempts, remove tracking data, and to prevent websites from forcing ads on visitors using blocking software.

Rewrites, however, can only take place within the same domain as an original request, and SCRIPT, SUBDOCUMENT, OBJECT, and OBJECT_SUBREQUEST request types are not accepted.

Under certain conditions, it appears that arbitrary code can be injected when domains load JS strings using XMLHttpRequest or when they use Fetch to download code snippets for execution. Websites must also have a server-side open redirect or must host arbitrary user content for the exploit to work.

In addition, the page must not restrict origins using Content Security Policy directives and final request URLs cannot be validated before downloaded code is executed.
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As an example of how the security flaw could be triggered, Sebastian utilized Google Maps. As the service met the conditions above, the researcher was able to write exploit code which would load content from "majestic-ramsons.herokuapp .com" -- in this case, prompting a pop-up alert.

The issue was reported but Google says the open redirect used by Google Maps is "intended behavior" and the potential security problem lies only within the mentioned browser extensions.

Sebastian says that the elimination of server-side open redirects or the whitelisting of known origins in impacted web services using the connect-src CSP header can mitigate the problem. It has also been suggested that ad-block users consider switching to uBlock Origin, which does not support the $rewrite filter option and is, therefore, not vulnerable to this form of attack.
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eva2000 · Apr 17, 2019

This is a useful reminder that securing one's server(s), starts with securing your own computers - laptops, desktops, mobile, tablet etc

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Security Exploit in browser extensions for Adblock, Adblock Plus, and uBlock

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Security Exploit in browser extensions for Adblock, Adblock Plus, and uBlock

eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

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