Pingback Denial of Service possibility

[foobarwp12]

The pingback feature of Wordpress (2.1.3) allows DDOS attacks either against the server hosting wordpress or against a third one.

When a client sends a pingback, wordpress calls "wp_remote_fopen" to download the referring URL. On servers having "allow_url_fopen" activated, this function will try to download the /whole/ URL without any timeout or size limit. (except those set in php.ini, which will usually lead to a ~8MB download)

So if you post ~100 xmlrpc requests referring to a /huge/ file, every server meeting those prerequisites should effectively be down (for a while). You should at least be able to generate lots of traffic.

On the other hand, if you google for blogs and post the same URL to each of 'em, the target server should be DDOSed.

I suggest allowing pingbacks only if the connection was opened from the host mentioned in the source URL.

I'll attach a demo exploit (I didn't test it for the entered URL; it worked for a local installation.)

[foobarwp12]

Exploit

[rob1n]

We'll put this in for 2.3.

[pishmishy]

Replying to foobarwp12:

I suggest allowing pingbacks only if the connection was opened from the host mentioned in the source URL.

This is a tricky one. I think this suggestion will break for URLs where the host name is an alias for another host as the URL's hostname might be completely different to the hostname of the system where the pingback request comes from.

Setting a limit the size of the download wouldn't completely remove the amplification effect (the limit would have to be less than the size of the xmlrpc request) but it is what the Pingback specification recommends.

I've changed the name of this ticket - there is the potential for a distributed denial of service here but the real issue is the amplification in bandwidth leading to a traditional denial of service attack.

[pishmishy]

Patch to fix wp_remote_fopen()s use when allow_url_fopen

[pishmishy]

The attachment fixes the problem when allow_url_fopen has been set but doesn't fix the problem when curl is used to fetch the source page. I believe that this case can be fixed using callbacks but my PHP isn't up to the task. I'm opening that part up to others.

[pishmishy]

potential fix for issue when curl is used?

[pishmishy]

This second attachment contains a potential fix for the issue when using curl to fetch the pages. It feels ugly to me but I hope that it should do the trick. I've only tested the function outside of WordPress and it does appear to be able to limit the number of bytes fetched with curl but how well it plays with WordPress I wouldn't like to guess.

[Otto42]

You may want to set the CURLOPT_RANGE parameter as well. On servers that support it (HTTP 1.1, some FTP's), it will limit the server to only returning the amount of data you want. On those that don't support it, it won't have any effect.

I would also suggest setting CURLOPT_BUFFERSIZE (only for PHP5 and up) to some value like 4096 or something. I think the default action of curl in the way you're using it will simply retrieve the whole page and return it to your read function as a single string, or as some really large buffer or something.

Using a CURLOPT_TIMEOUT of some value, like 30-60 seconds, would also limit the impact from this sort of thing.

Essentially, there's no certain way to make curl stop retrieving data. But these would at least help.

[pishmishy]

patch improved with suggestions

[pishmishy]

Sorry for the delay in an updated patch, been on holiday. I've amended the patch with Otto42's suggestions.

[Denis-de-Bernardy]

any traction on this one?

[ryan]

Patch no longer applies now that we moved to WP_Http.

There are so many ways to orchestrate a DDOS, I don't know if this is worth bothering with. If someone feels otherwise, re-open with a patch that works with WP_Http.

[wycks]

This might be worth looking into again as there is now a ready made script taking advantage of the Pingback API that will most likely be bundled for the script kiddie's.

​https://github.com/FireFart/WordpressPingbackPortScanner

[soficgr]

I agree with wycks. Famous news blog in my country today talking about this.
I think must go to minor again. There are so many ways to do DDOS, is true (not need wp for this). But this is famous for wp and has script. Matt said this summer "we chose two, stability and security for wp" in video and i really liked it, many people don't understand what is this "simply read in a blog and then panic".

[pishmishy]

Can someone remind me how I 'unown' a ticket. I'm afraid I haven't got time to devote to this and I don't want it to look like I'm continuing to take ownership when that's clearly not the case.

[hakre]

X-Ref: #23350, [23330]

[nacin]

In 24870:

Limit pingback response size. fixes #4137.

[nacin]

In 24871:

Limit pingback response size. fixes #4137. for trunk.