A Flaw Worth Fixing? How We Tested (And Stopped) the Facebook Notes Flaw


Recently, independent researcher Chaman Thapa published a report on an attack scenario showing how someone could use Facebook Notes to DDoS any website. When Facebook and DDoS enter the conversation, news spreads quickly and questions emerge. What is the flaw? How serious is it? Who or what can be affected? The Radware Emergency Response Team (ERT) decided to take a look at the Facebook Notes attack type by testing it in our lab. First, here’s some background:

What is ‘Facebook Notes’:

Facebook Notes is an application offered by Facebook. It allows users to use tags

snippet01

and link to external images and files. When Notes are published, any viewer of the Note will see the image via Facebook fetching the image and then presenting it the user.

How can it be used for Attacks?

During Thapa’s research, he noticed an anomaly. Facebook will not fetch the same image twice. This led him to suggest the following attack:

If even a single bogus parameter is changed in the URL that is requested, Facebook will fetch it again-and-again. An attacker can create a Note like this:

snippet03
* From “A Programmer’s Blog”

The Note tags above would cause Facebook to make 1,000 HTTP request to the targeted site. If an attacker were to open even 10 pages per second, that Note could potentially generate an average of 10,000 HTTP requests to the targeted site. Using large images or even PDF files can amplify this effect so that essentially, one small request could potentially pull several megabytes of traffic back. In one test, Thapa was able to pull 900Mbps from a website – large enough to kill either the web server or the Internet pipe of many websites.

If a malicious user were to craft a Note with numerous links, many HTTP requests and the resulting increase in traffic sent to a victim’s site may cause an outage.

What is Facebook Doing about This?

Thapa shared his research with Facebook’s Bug Bounty program and was told they “appreciated this report and discussed it at some length.” Ultimately, however the social media giant decided against making changes to “avoid disrupting intended and desirable functions.”

Here’s Our Test:

Radware ERT researched how difficult it is to stop such an attack yet found that even the most basic Web Challenge mitigation technique could block it. Web Challenge, a common technology to block HTTP application attacks, is available in many security systems today.

Here’s how the block works:

When under attack the security system challenges all HTTP requests and sends them back a 302 Redirect reply. Included in this reply is a special cookie. Legitimate users using normal browsers will honor the redirect command, even without the user necessarily noticing. They will send the HTTP cookie back, which will authenticate them to the security system and allow them to go on to their desired sever. Attackers using scripts, however, which generate dozens of request per second, do not wait for the response. They are unable to process the 302 redirect or to save the cookie.

Summary:

Although Facebook reviewed Thapa’s research and decided against a fix, it is interesting that this flaw could potentially generate up to 900 Mbps of web traffic from a social media site that is accessible to 728 million daily users. Granted – there are other “go-to” attack vectors that cyber-attackers could use at their disposal for DDoS, but this flaw piqued our interest due to Facebook’s worldwide presence.

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Ron Meyran

Ron Meyran leads the marketing activities, partner strategy and Go-to-Market plans for Radware’s alliance and application partners. He also works to develop joint solutions that add value proposition and help drive sales initiatives – designed to increase visibility and lead generation. Mr. Meyran is a security and SDN industry expert who represents Radware at various industry events and training sessions. His thought leadership and opinion pieces have been widely published in leading IT & security industry magazines and he holds a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Ben-Gurion University and a MBA from Tel Aviv University.

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