Software Engineering Institute

On Oracle 9i Application Servers, it is possible to use a "cross-site" scripting technique to inject malicious script (JavaScript, VBScript, etc.) or HTML into a web page. Specifically, default access to the "htp" PL/SQL package can be used to exploit this vulnerability. This package is used to export HTML and HTML tags.

The essence of cross-site scripting is that an intruder causes a legitimate web server to send a page to a victim's web browser that contains malicious script or HTML of the intruder's choosing. The malicious script runs with the privileges of a legitimate script originating from the legitimate web server.

Oracle 9i Application Servers, and several other server applications are vulnerable to such an technique via various methods. For more details on Cross-Site Scripting please see CERT Advisory CA-2000-02.

The victim will be presented with information which the compromised site did not wish their visitors to be subjected. This could be used to "sniff" sensitive data from within the web page, including passwords, credit card numbers, and any arbitrary information the user inputs.

Oracle has released an alert to address this issue (Section 1-e). Oracle has released a the following patches for the following systems at http://metalink.oracle.com:

Oracle9iAS, v1.0.2.x

Platform\tPatch Number

Sun Solaris \t2209455
Windows \t2209455

Oracle9i Database, Release 9.0.1

Platform \tPatch Number

Sun Solaris \t2209455
Windows \t2209455

Oracle8i Database, Release 8.1.7.x

Platform \tPatch Number

Sun Solaris \t2209455
Windows \t2209455

A web master may change the default error page to not include the file name passed in by any user. The client may disable JavaScript (or VBScript or other scripting languages), but it doesn't address the problem of simply inserting malicious HTML, and it can cause undesired functionality.