SSL weakness affecting links from pages with GET forms

[Mark M.]

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On Fri, 28 Mar 1997, Bill Stewart wrote:

> http://www.zdnet.com:80/intweek/daily/970327x.html
> has an article about an SSL problem that affects both Netscape
> and MicrosoftIE browsers, leaking "secure" data such as
> credit card numbers from web pages with GET-based SSL forms on it.
> It was discovered by Dan Klein.
> 
> There isn't specific detail about how the flaw works,
> but it says that it affects GET forms but not POST.
> Commentary from NS, MS, Gene Spafford, and Steve Bellovin.
> 
>    "It's like you've gone to the restaurant with your lover," Klein said. 
>    "The restaurant is there, it's private, yet when you leave the restaurant 
>    you have the menu in your hand and there's food all over your shirt."

I would guess that this means that Netscape and Explorer send the complete
URL of the page that linked to another site in the "HTTP-REFERER" header in
the clear when SSL is used.  The only temporary solution is to use a local web
proxy that removes this header, or, as the article suggests, manually type in
an URL that is linked from a page using SSL.  I can't think of too many
situations where one might follow a link to another site immediately after
sending sensitive information, but the contents of the "HTTP-REFERER" header
are often logged, and the log is often world-readable...

> 
> 
> 
> #			Thanks;  Bill
> # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts at ix.netcom.com
> # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
> #     (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)
> 
> 


Mark
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