ntopng 1.2.0 XSS injection using monitored network traffic

ntopng is the next generation version of the original ntop, a network
traffic probe and monitor that shows the network usage, similar to what
the popular top Unix command does.

The web-based frontend of the software is vulnerable to injection of
script code via forged HTTP Host: request header lines in monitored
network traffic.

HTTP Host request header lines are extracted using nDPI traffic
classification library and used without sanitization in several places
in the frontend, e.g. the Host overview and specific subpages for each
monitored host.

The injected code might be used to execute javascript and to perform
management actions with the user-rights of the current ntopng user,
which can be used to disable the monitoring function or deletion of
accounts making the monitoring system unusable.

To give a coarse idea of the vulnerability the following python script
can be used on the monitored network, afterwards the victim needs to
browse to the Host overview / Host details in the ntopng frontend.

import httplib

conn = httplib.HTTPConnection("example.com")
headers = {"Host": "<SCRIPT>alert(\"xss\")</SCRIPT>", "Accept":
"text/plain"}
conn.request("GET", "/", None, headers)
r1 = conn.getresponse()
print(r1.status, r1.reason)
data1 = r1.read()

Other users of the nDPI code might be affected as well.

Steffen Bauch
Twitter: @steffenbauch
http://steffenbauch.de