IntroductionCross Site Scripting or XSS vulnerabilities have been reported and exploited since 1990s. XSS got listed as the top 3rd Vulnerability in the OWASP 2013 Web application Vulnerabilities list. Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type of security vulnerability typically found in web applications which allows the attackers to inject client-side script into web pages viewed by other users. The execution of the injected code takes place at client side. A cross site scripting vulnerability can be used by the attacker to bypass the Same Origin Policy (SOP). In the past, the potentials of XSS vulnerability were not known. XSS was mainly used for stealing cookies and for temporary or permanent defacements and was not considered as high risk vulnerability. But later XSS tunneling and Payload delivering showed us the potential of XSS Vulnerability. Most of the large websites like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Amazon etc. even now suffers from XSS bugs. That’s a brief introduction about XSS.
Some threats due to XSS
XSS Tunneling: With XSS Tunnel a hacker will obtain the traffic between the victim and a webserver.
Client side code injection: A hacker can inject malicious codes and execute them at client side.
DOS: A hacker can perform DOS against a remote server or against the client itself.
Cookie Stealing: A hacker can obtain the session cookies or tokens of a victim.
Malware Spreading: A hacker can spread malwares with a website which is vulnerable to XSS.
Phishing: A hacker can embed or redirect to a fake page of the website to get the login credentials of the victim.
Defacing: Temporary or permanent defacement of web application is possible.
What is Xenotix XSS Exploit Framework?
Xenotix XSS Exploit Framework is a penetration testing tool to detect and exploit XSS vulnerabilities in Web Applications.This tool can inject codes into a webpage which are vulnerable to XSS.It is basically a payload list based XSS Scanner and XSS Exploitation kit. It provides a penetration tester the ability to test all the XSS payloads available in the payload list against a web application to test for XSS vulnerabilities. The tool supports both manual mode and automated time sharing based test modes. The exploitation framework in the tool includes a XSS encoder, a victim side XSS keystroke logger, an Executable Drive-by downloader, a XSS Reverse Shell and a XSS DDoSer. These exploitation tools will help the penetration tester to create proof of concept attacks on vulnerable web applications during the creation of a penetration test report.
Features of Xenotix XSS Exploit Framework
Xenotix XSS Exploit Framework is divided into two module
Scanner Module
- Built in XSS Payloads
- HTML5 compactable Payload list
- XSS Auto mode Scanner
- XSS Multi-Parameter Scanner
- XSS Fuzzer
Exploitation Framework- XSS Keylogger
- XSS Executable Drive-by downloader
- XSS Payload Encoder
- XSS Reverse Shell
- XSS DDoSer
- XSS Cookie Thief
Scanner Module
Built in Payload List
It is having an inbuilt XSS payload list of above 500+ XSS payloads. It includes HTML5 compactable XSS injection payloads.Most of the XSS filters are implemented using String Replace filter, htmlentities filter and htmlspecialcharacters filter. Most of these weakly designed filters can be bypassed by specific XSS payloads present in the inbuilt payload list.
The above chart shows the number of XSS Payloads in different XSS Scanning tools available in market. Xenotix XSS Exploit Framework got the world’s second largest XSS Payload list after IBM AppScan Security which is having 700 million payloads.
XSS Scanner Module
The Multi-Parameter XSS Scanner comes when you have multiple parameters to test for XSS. It can extract the different parameters from the given URL and test them individually. It saves a lot of your time as you don’t need to test each parameter separately.
The XSS Fuzzer is a convenient module to detect hidden XSS as well as other vulnerabilities like HTTP Parameter Polution. With the Fuzzer, one can conduct an out of the box testing of the box fuzzing to detect hidden vulnerabilities in a web application.
The tool includes an inbuilt victim side Key logger which is implemented using JavaScript and PHP. PHP is served with the help of a portable PHP server named QuickPHP by Zach Saw. A JavaScript file is injected into the web application vulnerable to XSS and is presented to the victim. The script captures the keystrokes made by the victim and send to a PHP file which further write down the logs into a text file.
