GlobalObjectPoisoning

(legacy summary: passing any object cross-frame gives access to global definitions.) (legacy labels: Attack-Vector)

Global Object Poisoning

Effect

Can lead to a plugin's method being invoked in the context of the application's object, thus allowing the method to steal references to the object itself, its fields, and its methods ; or to replace its fields and methods. This includes methods that are frequently implicitly invoked such as toString and valueOf.

Can lead to a spurious value showing up when iterating over keys in an Object or Array.

Background

Each frame gets its own version of the builtin objects Object, Array, etc.

Array and Object are implicitly referred to via the array and object constructor syntaxes and Object is the base of all prototype chains, so even if global references to Array and Object are removed from code, they are still implicitly invoked.

Many javascript operators, when applied to objects, invoke special methods to coerce the objects to primitive value. The arithmetic and comparison operators (==, <, etc.) invoke valueOf with a "type hint" of number which allows new Date(2008, 0, 1) < new Date(1970, 0, 1) to compare chronologically.

This combination of implicit constructors, and implicitly called methods makes it non-obvious when a constructor is called, and when a method might be invoked, making javascript code subject to confused deputy attacks where a piece of attached code can be attached to a prototype and later run on an object the attacker cannot directly reference.

Subspace may have found a way to launder a function or object using discardable iframes and carefully choregraphed document.domain tricks to allow a function or object to be passed to another frame, but that only allows passing of primitive data since returning an object would reopen the attack vector.

Also see SpiderMonkey Peculiarity for a way in which changes to Object.prototype can violate the assumptions a closure makes about its containing scope.

Assumptions

An attacker can modify the prototype of Object or Array.

Global reference is not necessary. The examples below work if

Array.prototype

is replaced with

[].constructor.prototype

and Object similarly

Versions

Works in IE 6 and Firefox. Example 2 works in Safari, but 1 is untested in Safari. The function scope confusion trick works in the versions of SpiderMonkey that shipped with Firefox < 2.

Example

(1) Array poisoning

Array.prototype[4] = 'four';
var a1 = [];
alert('a1 has length ' + a1.length + ' but element 4 is ' + a1[4]);

var a2 = new Array(5);
alert('a2 has length ' + a2.length + ' and its element 4 is also ' + a2[4]);

(2) Object poisoning

Object.prototype.toString = function () {
  var name = this.name ;
  this.name = 'mud';
  return 'HA ' + name + '.  IM STEALIN UR CODEZ!';
};
var o = { name: 'Bingo' };
alert('' + o);
alert('Your name is now ' + o.name);

(3) Cross-frame poisoning

// Frame 1
var stolen;
function fromOtherFrame(o) {
  o.constructor.prototype.valueOf = function () {
    stolen = this;
    return '[Object]';
  };
}
// Frame 1 uses some mechanism like document.domain juggling
// to pass a function to another.


// Frame 2
var secretObject = ...;
fromOtherFrame({ x: 4 });
if (secretObject == '');  // implicitly calls Object.prototype.valueOf
// Frame 2 passes an object containing no sensitive information.
// Frame 1 changes the definition of Frame 2's object, so it can
// steal access to secretObject even though secretObject is never
// explicitly passed to any function, and never has any of its methods
// explicitly called.