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* This is a character sequence

LDAP Injection Example

Consider an LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF) file that contains records in the following format:

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An authentication routine that permitted LDAP injection would allow unauthorized users to log in. Likewise, a search routine would allow an attacker to discover part or all of the data in the directory.

Noncompliant Code Example

This noncompliant code example allows a caller of the method searchRecord() to search for a record in the directory using the LDAP protocol. The string filter is used to filter the result set for those entries that match a user name and password supplied by the caller. When a malicious user enters specially crafted input, as outlined previously, this elementary authentication scheme fails to confine the output of the search query to the information for which the user has access privileges.

// String userSN = "S*"; // Invalid
// String userPassword = "*"; // Invalid
public class LDAPInjection {        
  private void searchRecord(String userSN, String userPassword) throws NamingException {        
    Hashtable<String, String>  env = new Hashtable<String, String>();
    env.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY, "com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtxFactory");
    try {
      DirContext dctx = new InitialDirContext(env);
		    
      SearchControls sc = new SearchControls();
      String[] attributeFilter = {"cn", "mail"};
      sc.setReturningAttributes(attributeFilter);
      sc.setSearchScope(SearchControls.SUBTREE_SCOPE);
      String base = "dc=example,dc=com";

      // The following resolves to (&(sn=S*)(userPassword=*))      
      String filter = "(&(sn=" + userSN + ")(userPassword=" + userPassword + "))"; 

      NamingEnumeration<?> results = dctx.search(base, filter, sc);
      while (results.hasMore()) {
        SearchResult sr = (SearchResult) results.next();
        Attributes attrs = sr.getAttributes();
        Attribute attr = attrs.get("cn");
        System.out.println(attr.get());
        attr = attrs.get("mail");
        System.out.println(attr.get());
      }
      dctx.close();
    } catch (NamingException e) {
      // Handle
    }
  }
}

Compliant Solution

This compliant solution uses a whitelist to sanitize user input so that the filter string contains only valid characters. In this code, userSN may contain only letters and spaces, whereas a password may contain only alphanumeric characters.

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When a database field such as a password must include special characters, it is critical to ensure that the authentic data is stored in sanitized form in the database and also that any user input is normalized before the validation or comparison takes place. We discourage use of characters that have special meanings in JNDI and LDAP in the absence of a comprehensive normalization and whitelisting-based routine. Refer to IDS50-JG. Properly encode or escape output for examples on output encoding and escaping. Special characters must be transformed to sanitized safe values before they are added to the whitelist expression against which input will be validated. Likewise, normalization of user input (escaping and encoding) should occur before the validation step.

Risk Assessment

Failure to sanitize untrusted input can result in information disclosure and privilege escalation.

Related Vulnerabilities

Search for vulnerabilities resulting from the violation of this guideline on the CERT website.

Bibliography

[API 2006]
[OWASP 2008] Preventing LDAP Injection in Java

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VOID IDS10-J. Prevent XML external entity attacks      00. Input Validation and Data Sanitization (IDS)      IDS52-J. Prevent code injectionImage Added      Image Added      Image Added