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This guideline is a specific example of the broadly scoped 07 IDS52-J. Prevent code injection.

XML Path Injection Example

Consider the following XML schema:

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The passwords are hashed in compliance with 13MSC62-J. Store passwords using a hash function. MD5 hashes are shown here for illustrative purposes; in practice, you should use a safer algorithm such as SHA-256.

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private boolean doLogin(String userName, char[] password)
  throws ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, IOException, XPathExpressionException {

  DocumentBuilderFactory domFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
  domFactory.setNamespaceAware(true);
  DocumentBuilder builder = domFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
  Document doc = builder.parse("users.xml");
  String pwd = hashPassword( password);

  XPathFactory factory = XPathFactory.newInstance();
  XPath xpath = factory.newXPath();
  XPathExpression expr = xpath.compile("//users/user[username/text()='" +
       userName + "' and password/text()='" + pwd + "' ]");
  Object result = expr.evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);
  NodeList nodes = (NodeList) result;

  // Print first names to the console
  for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) {
    Node node = nodes.item(i).getChildNodes().item(1).getChildNodes().item(0);
    System.out.println( "Authenticated: " + node.getNodeValue());
  }

  return (nodes.getLength() >= 1);
}

Compliant Solution (XQuery)

XPath injection can be prevented by adopting defenses similar to those used to prevent SQL injection:

• Treat all user input as untrusted, and perform appropriate sanitization.
• When sanitizing user input, verify the correctness of the data type, length, format, and content. For example, use a regular expression that checks for XML tags and special characters in user input. This practice corresponds to input sanitization. See 07IDS52-J. Prevent code injection for additional details.
• In a client-server application, perform validation at both the client and the server sides.
• Extensively test applications that supply, propagate, or accept user input.

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Using this method, the data specified in the userName and password fields cannot be interpreted as executable content at runtime.

Applicability

Failure to validate user input may result in information disclosure and execution of unprivileged code.

According to OWASP [OWASP 2014],

[Prevention of XPath injection] requires the following characters to be removed (that is, prohibited) or properly escaped:

• < > / ' = " to prevent straight parameter injection.
• XPath queries should not contain any meta characters (such as ' = * ? // or similar).
• XSLT expansions should not contain any user input, or if they do, [you should] comprehensively test the existence of the file, and ensure that the files are within the bounds set by the Java 2 Security Policy.

Automated Detection

Bibliography

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